The Storm
by Mr H Pickles
Summary: While on a holiday with his old school friends, university student Mark Harding finds himself washed up on a strange island with no idea how he got there or how to leave. He is forced to mature and learn more about himself than he ever imagined as he struggles to survive. Rated M for language and some gory moments.
1. Prologue: Kings of the World

Prologue: Kings of the World

Early evening, 15th June

"Here's to being the kings of the motherfucking world!" Tom yelled as we cheered and shoved our flimsy plastic shot cups into each other's, splashing some of the colourless drink out of the top and over our hands. Tom looked over in my direction. "Oh, sorry Mark. Kings _and_ queens." He sniggered and we all downed our drinks, cringing as the vile sambuca washed down our throats. We turned up the music as far as it could go, completely downing out our voices. That didn't matter, we were too pissed to care. The sun was setting, the night had just begun, and we'd already been drinking for four hours. Tom clambered up the chrome ladder to the roof and, with his arms outstretched, shouted, "I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing and I'm fucking loving it!" as we all watched in hysterics.

This wasn't exactly what my parents had in mind when I suggested taking their yacht out for a month with my mates. It had taken the better part of a year of convincing to get to a point where we could break their trust like this. It was hard to care though; we were all twenty-years-old and having the time of our lives. The yacht wasn't huge, containing only a few decks and a relatively small engine; I didn't think it was anything too fancy but it more than suited our purposes. In reality, we were incredibly lucky people, I just didn't appreciate my lifestyle nearly as much as I should have.

"You look like you need another drink, mate!" I shouted up at Tom, barely above the music's volume, while walking towards the door to the interior of the boat.

"Too bloody right I do!" He shouted back.

I returned a couple of minutes later, four bottles of cheap lager in hand, to find Sam turning the music down and David using his phone to film Tom above me. He'd whipped his shirt off and, without a moment's notice, was charging towards the portside edge shouting 'cannonball' at the top of his voice. He leapt off the side of the pure white roof and curled himself into a ball in mid-air. After a few surprisingly graceful seconds of plummeting, he narrowly missed the metal railing on the wooden lower deck and hit the sea, showering the rest of us in seawater. I quickly had to turn my back to the torrent to save the open beers in my hands. In hindsight, what Tom did was incredibly dumb, but we found it absolutely hilarious at the time.

Despite being plastered, Tom swam over to the ladder at the back and climbed up no problem. He sauntered over, took a bottle from my hand, took a swig and said, "Who's next then? David?"

"No fucking way, that looks dangerous. Do you have any idea how many chicks would give up on life if something happened to me?" David semi-sarcastically responded,

"Your mum?" Tom quickly replied, met with laughter from everyone but a frowning David. "Alright, his Royal-Fucking-Highness here is pussying out. How about it, Mark?"

"Sorry mate, David's mum would miss me too much," I joked as I gave a bottle to Sam, "I'm sure Sam will have a go though. You did high jumping or something, right?"

"How about just a plain no?" He said before taking a drink. "Because I'm not a moron."

"I'll drink to that!" David shouted, swiping his beer from my hand and raising it to the sky. "To not being fucking twats!" We all cheered and raised our bottles high.

It was with these three people that I shared the month-long ocean-going piss-up. I'd known Tom and David since primary school. When we all went to separate universities, we vowed to stay in touch and get smashed together at least once every time we were all back home. Other friends from our school years joined for most of them as well but us three went every single time. We'd managed to stick to this for two years so far.

Tom was the loud one, that one friend who goes ballistic every time they touch a drop of alcohol. He was a good laugh though and always up for whatever we had planned. My parents were friends with his parents so we had gotten pretty close over the years and I would argue that he was my closest friend.

David was something of a poser, he fancied himself to be pretty suave and was generally not willing to upset his image at all, even on a boat in the middle of the bloody ocean. He was good fun once you got him out of his shell though. He had been putting the whole trip up on every social media imaginable every time we got a hint of Wi-Fi. Thankfully, this wasn't often and we generally tried to ruin his pictures in one way or another; somewhere on his phone is a picture of him with the sun setting over the beautiful Spanish coast in the background and just in front of it is me giving the camera the middle finger while surfing a hunched over Tom shortly before collapsing into a heap on the deck. David wasn't nearly as happy with that picture as we were.

Lastly, there was Sam; I met him at university when we were put in the same first year flat. We really got along and so stuck together afterwards. Turned out he came from a similar part of London to the rest of us so he started to come along to our holiday bashes and became a part of the group. He still wasn't hugely comfortable with everyone and so tended to be more reserved, but he was still a lot of fun and certainly had let himself go a bit crazier over this trip.

I had also tried to convince the others to let me bring my girlfriend, Lucy, but Tom insisted this was going to be a 'lads' holiday' and that she would therefore upset the balance. I was pretty sure that the real reason was that none of the others had girlfriends, David's explanation being that he 'didn't want to be tied down to one girl.'

Lucy and I had been going out for nearly two years by this point and I missed her a lot, despite knowing that I'd see her in a few weeks anyway. Whenever David was Instragramming, I was usually either texting or calling Lucy over Wi-Fi to get a sense of comfort.

We had been anchored up fairly far off the coast of Ibiza for a few days now doing very little but spending alternate days drinking and recovering. It was a painful cycle but a fun one nevertheless. All we could remember was generally just the odd game of beer pong or Ring of Fire and every horrible morning of recovery. Except for Sam; we had no idea how, but he always remembered everything that happened and rarely had more than a mild headache from a hangover. Despite being the smallest, he seemed to be a serious heavyweight when it came to drinking; it was very frustrating for the rest of us.

This was going to be the last night that we were staying offshore before moving to Ibiza itself – to join the rest of our generation and get pissed in the island's clubs instead – so we thought we'd best make it a big one.


	2. Chapter One: The First Day

Act One: Survival

Chapter One: The First Day

Mid-Morning, 16th June

Pain surged through my body. My head throbbed and every joint ached and pulsed. I could feel the heat of the sun beating down on my back and struggled to open my eyes. I was used to feeling shit on this holiday, but this was much worse than normal. The lack of the boat's gentle rocking worried me, but I just figured that I was just still slightly drunk from the night before and so was imagining things. Considering the rest of the trip's mornings, it wasn't much of a stretch.

I inched open my eyes to try and have a look at where on the boat I'd ended up. I couldn't focus my vision at all, but could make out the beige and green colours on the floor and the perfect blue of the sky. I definitely wasn't on the boat anymore.

As my senses came back to me, I could feel my soaked clothes clinging to me while I lay face down in sand. Small waves were gently crashing behind me and the wind was rustling the leaves of nearby trees. My stomach was empty, my throat was completely dry, and I was aching all over. I raised my head and tried to focus my sight. With great effort, I managed to focus my vision and make out more of the landscape. It was beautiful; just past the short sandy beach I found myself on was lush green grass, rolling hills, and a small but beautiful cascading waterfall. It was more tropical than the Mediterranean landscape I was used to, with some oddly present oak trees added in.

Mustering as much strength as I could, I gracelessly forced myself over onto my back, groaning and swearing under my breath as I did. This let me take in the open air and think about what I was going to do. Somewhat convinced that this was a 'hilarious' joke played on me by my friends, I looked towards the sea expecting to see the yacht anchored not far away. Nothing. No boats, not even any other land to be seen.

I lay there for what felt like a few minutes but was probably more like an hour. I had no idea what had happened; the thought that I could actually be stranded on this island briefly crossed my mind, but I pushed it away in favour of optimistic denial.

After a long time of staring absentmindedly up into the sky, I decided that I should try and find water of some description, my thinking being that it would at least help me pass the time until my friends came back to pick me up.

Planting my hands on the floor, I pushed myself to sit up. As I slid my legs back, I felt a powerful throbbing pain in my left leg. A check of my lower leg revealed a massive laceration down the side of it; it had bled profusely all over the rest of my leg but had clearly been there for a while as the blood had clotted. Touching it hurt like nothing I'd ever experienced before in my life but, unfortunately, there wasn't a lot I could do about it at this point.

There was nothing majorly wrong with the rest of my body, a lot of minor cuts and bruises but the one leg meant they felt relatively insignificant. Trying to minimise the use of that leg, I slowly and carefully stood up, putting most of my weight on my right leg rather than my left.

Once I had stood up, I took a good look at my surroundings. It was about midday at this point, so the sun was beaming down all over the landscape before me. The grass was bright green and the water was glistening a pure blue. Everything seemed eternally peaceful. I figured a good move would be to find some fresh water and the best place to look for that would be the bottom of the nearby waterfall. Moving was going to take a great deal of effort, however. I limped and stumbled my way across to the nearest tree to steady myself then moved onto the next one. A few trees and about 10 minutes later I had made it to the stream the waterfall ran into. I collapsed next to it, bringing immense pain to my leg despite trying to put more weight on the good one.

The water was astonishingly clear; I could see right to the rocky bed of the stream with ease. It was an absolutely amazing sight when I was used to the murky waters of the Thames back home. Trying to ignore my never ending pain, I put my face next to the water, made a bowl shape with my hands and lifted handfuls of water up to my face, drinking some and splashing others over my face as fast as my arms would let me, which turned out to not be particularly fast. The feeling of rehydration was incredible, at least compared to the rest of the day's events so far.

I indulged myself for a few minutes before I looked up and spotted an apple falling from a faraway oak tree. This was a weird place. I didn't particularly care or even think of the possibility that these apples could in some way be dangerous seeming as these trees seemed very unnaturally placed. I pulled myself up and stumbled to the nearest tree a few feet away. Sure enough, when I looked up there were, inexplicably, apples hanging from the branches. They were as ripe and bright red as you could find in a supermarket back home. Unfortunately, they were too high up for me to reach and I couldn't climb the tree with my leg in the condition it was, so I gripped one of the lower branches and shook it as hard and fast as I possibly could; which in my current state wasn't particularly hard or fast. A number of apples were dislodged and fell to the ground; I scrabbled around on the floor as best as I could to get a few of these, hastily devouring a couple of them right down to the core and putting two more in my sodden pockets.

My hunger and thirst somewhat satisfied for the moment, I pulled myself back to the tree so I could sit down underneath and use it as shade from the sun. I hadn't realised how much energy I was using by just moving. I exhaustedly sat with my back resting on the tree for a while and tried to figure out what to do about my leg. I had done basic first aid with the Scouts but that was years ago, I couldn't remember a thing. I figured that I should try to wash and bandage it.

Using the tree for balance, I picked myself up and limped back to the stream where I sat back down and put my leg close to the water. I leant over, slowly and painfully lifted my trouser leg up past the gash, then splashed some water over it and tried to rub some of the dirt out of the wound that had gathered. The blood washing off the wound tainted the flowing water as the dark red spread across the stream. I had to fight through the pain caused just by touching the wound, wincing as I went. This took a lot longer than it probably should have but that pain was intense, I couldn't wash it for long at a time before having to stop for breaks.

After about five minutes of this, I was fairly satisfied – and sick of the pain – so I ripped off a few very uneven strips of my shirt to use as makeshift bandages, quickly washed them in an untainted section of the water slightly upstream and gently wrapped them around my leg. Once I had that bandaged to the best of my ability, I slowly lowered my trouser leg over the wound.

I started to realise the situation that I was in. The sun was getting ever lower and, while I didn't want to admit it, I had to find shelter for the night since the temperature could potentially drop sharply; I felt like I had to play it safe. It dawned on me that my first year's accommodation at university might not be the worst place I was ever going to live in.

Sitting back to rest against the tree, I scanned the surroundings. Nothing immediately leapt out at me as an obvious place to shelter. I was pretty disheartened; I didn't know the first thing about building a shelter and was in no state to do so regardless. However, after a long period of staring into the distance in disbelief, I spotted what looked like a cave hidden behind the leaves on a low hanging branch of a tree. It was on the other side of the stream but a fair distance away in the side of one of the larger hill peaks in the area. I had no idea how big it was or if it would even be suitable at all as a shelter, but I had to go for it; there weren't enough hours left in the day to look for anywhere else.

I carefully pushed myself upright and started to cross the stream. While not being a large stream, I spent a long time doing this just to make sure I didn't slip and damage myself further; I had enough problems as it was. I eventually negotiated the stream and made my way to the cave opening. Moving the low hanging branch out of the way revealed a small alcove, no more than 15-foot-deep and 10-foot-wide. It would do for the night at least, a place to sleep and to try to think of some way out of this mess. The branch's leaves covering my new home would also provide some sort of paltry defence if any harsh winds picked up.

As I moved in, I let the branch fling back to cover the entrance, sat down against one of the alcove's walls and had my pathetic dinner of two now soggy and disgusting apples. They would at least stave off my hunger for a while. Afterwards, I sat there motionless for ages. I wasn't sure for how long, but the sun had nearly completely set afterwards.

I just thought over the whole situation I was in. I had no idea what had happened or how to get out of it. Were my friends still on the boat or were they in the same situation somewhere on this island? To keep myself sane, I decided that I'd fallen overboard and they were currently looking for me. It helped for a few precious moments until my thoughts drifted to Lucy and my family. What if I never saw them again?It was a horrible thought. As a tear found a path down my cheek, I tried to convince myself once more that I would be back on the yacht soon. I wasn't entirely successful as thoughts of being stranded forever preyed on my mind. It was futile to hold back my useless blubbering and muttered swear words. I spent the rest of that evening huddled in the corner of this depressing place sobbing at the thought that I might never get back home.

The temperature dropped fairly sharply when the sun descended below the horizon. The mild breeze on my still damp clothes chilled me to my core. It was nigh-on impossible to sleep under those conditions; I just curled up as best as I could as I stared outside through the gaps in the rustling leaves and tried not to think about it.

Generally, the night outside was calm to start off with. Apart from the trees occasionally blowing in a light breeze, nothing seemed to move. That didn't remain the case, however. Later in the night, I saw a few presumably native creatures move. I couldn't make out what they were through the leaves though; they didn't look like anything I'd ever seen before. They seemed to be tall light-green coloured beings of some kind; like they tried to camouflage themselves against their environment but completely missed the mark. I wasn't going to go outside and see what these things were, I'd had enough trouble for one day without going out there and being savaged by these potentially dangerous native creatures. The fact that they only seemed to appear at night set off several horror movie alarm bells in my mind. I couldn't sleep anyway so I just kept my eye on them and tried to work out what they were. Sadly, to no avail.


	3. Chapter Two: Getting an Upgrade

Chapter Two: Getting an Upgrade

Late Morning, 17th June

I had managed to close my eyes for a few precious hours; once it got to the early hours of the morning, the temperature had shot up and I decided that the green horrors weren't going to bother me.

Despite waking up much later than I had planned, I was still exhausted. I slowly and carefully stood up by using the alcove's wall to make sure I put as little pressure on my wounded leg as possible and hobbled over to the tree branch. I cautiously lifted it up and checked outside to see if anything was still out there from last night. When I didn't see anything, I slowly stepped out and let the branch swing back into place. My mission today was going to be to try and find a source of food; apples weren't exactly something I could live off forever. I didn't really have a plan for how I was going to do this though; I was about the furthest you could get from being a farmer back home so I didn't know how to create a manageable food source or even how I could scavenge for some more substantial food. My hunting at university generally consisted of either making a trip to Lidl or getting on my phone to order a takeaway.

The absolute first thing I was going to do however was get a drink from the stream as I was absolutely parched. I started to make my way there, not really looking where I was going for concentrating on not falling over.

I'd just made it to a tree on the way when something smashed straight into it right next to my face and penetrated slightly into the bark. Shocked, I stumbled backwards but just managed to keep my balance. Looking back at the tree and the projectile that was still stuck in the trunk; it was an arrow. _An arrow?_

Thoroughly confused, I swung my head left in the direction it came from to catch a glimpse of a bright white figure standing not too far away from me just before it launched another arrow at me from its bow. It struck me in the arm and I collapsed on the floor screaming in pain and losing any sense of my surroundings. All I could do was lie on the floor screaming and swearing in agony. I tried to crawl away but my energy was draining and I couldn't focus on anything. The next few seconds seemed to last a lifetime, everything was a blur.

I heard a shout as another arrow flew just past my head, close enough to feel it clipping my hair. I looked over towards the white figure as far as I could see with my unfocused vision to see another shape, more human looking, give the first a mighty kick which shattered it into several pieces, some of which were spontaneously set alight. The other figure leant down to pick something off the floor before moving over to me. As the adrenaline of the encounter dwindled, I was fighting a losing battle to retain my consciousness. My vision faded as the second figure knelt down next to me.

A splash of water across my face opened my eyes instantly, not that I could focus on anything in sight. I could faintly hear someone talking next to me but couldn't make out what they were saying. They seemed to have propped me up against the tree I'd collapsed next to. I sat motionless, unable to function properly with the person still unsuccessfully trying to talk to me. After a minute or so of attempting to talk to me, they seemed to get frustrated, so they put their hand up to my face and gently slapped me a few times until I regained my focus and timidly pushed their hand away.

"Right, let's bloody try this again." The harsh, but well-spoken, female voice sounded slightly annoyed, tired of talking without an answer. She moved my head to face her and spoke slowly and clearly, "I need to get that arrow out of you. It's going to hurt but it can't stay there. Understand?" It took me a while to register what she said, but once I understood I tentatively nodded. I didn't have the strength to do much else. "Right, great. Let's try this." She moved out of my eyesight. I felt her grip the arrow and feel around the wound. I winced but didn't make a sound as she analysed the situation. Before I knew what was happening, she yanked out the arrow quickly and cleanly. I cried out in pain, hunched over and held the wound with my other hand. She soon moved back in front of me, gently patted my other shoulder and condescendingly said, "Come on brave boy, I'm going to need you to be conscious if you want to get out of here. Can you do that?" I sucked in as much air as I could and nodded again.

She moved around to my unwounded side, pulled my arm around her neck and held it in place as she wrapped her other arm around my body and hauled me up to my feet. I tried to help as best as I could but my entire existence seemed so painful that I couldn't focus on anything, especially not coordinating my movements. Despite her protests, the woman ended up doing most of the work.

My head hung low as she carried me in a seemingly random direction and each blink seemed to transport me further into a forest. I tried to be as little dead weight as possible but didn't help much. After a considerable amount of time, we approached a simple wooden door which she shoulder-barged open without any hesitation. This revealed a small room. While it wasn't anything temporary, the structure was certainly improvised judging by its uneven wall shape and size. She moved me across the room and slowly dropped me onto a makeshift bed on the far side.

The woman stepped back and exhaled. "Fuck me, you're heavy when you drop off." She seemed to expect me to reply, I just stared blankly at the empty wooden ceiling. "Alright, let's see what we can do about those injuries." She pulled up a nearby wooden chair, sat next to me and started to unravel the bandage I had put on my leg.

I must have drifted off for a while because when I opened my eyes again she had nearly finished washing off the wounds and wrapping them up. She glanced up as she was finishing and said, "You awake? You know you're going to have to talk at some point, right? Can you tell me your name?" I groaned and looked towards her. I could finally make out what she looked like. I felt as though she was in her late twenties but had aged ungracefully from a long time of surviving on this island so she looked like she could have been a few years older. Her long and unkempt brunette hair tumbled over her relatively slim and tanned face. She wore clothes that were certainly made by herself; she had fashioned some sort of overcoat out of leather which covered most of her. She also wore what appeared to be a woollen neckerchief down around her neck, I had to assume that it served some other purpose other than looking kind of cool but I couldn't figure out what. Her dark brown eyes were looking right at me, expecting an answer.

My throat was completely dry so talking was difficult, but I cleared it as best as I could and quietly muttered, "My name's Mark." I coughed a little, apparently being unsuccessful in my previous efforts to clear my throat. "Mark Harding."

She gave me a wry smile. "That wasn't so hard, was it? I'm Kate Thompson." She finished her bandaging and reached into her overcoat's pocket. "You sound like you could do with some water." She pulled out a small homemade wooden water canteen. "Drink this, it's fresh from your favourite stream." She smirked and handed it to me. I did as I was told and took a drink, eventually drinking the whole thing without initially realising. The feeling of the water running down my arid throat was incredible.

"Thank you, I really needed that. And thank you so much for saving me, I seriously owe you."

"Don't worry about it. I wasn't about to leave the first person I've seen in ages die on me." She stood up and started to walk towards the door, "I need to head back out and finish up my day; you rest for a while. You look like you've been through a lot." She turned around and moved towards an improvised longbow resting next to the front door. Picking it up and slinging it over her shoulder, she turned back to me and said, "We'll have to have a proper chat later," before leaving the building and gently closing the door.

I looked over my wounds. She'd done a very good job of cleaning and wrapping them; there wasn't a speck of dirt or blood anywhere around them and she'd used woollen bandages that I could only assume she'd made herself to cover them.

Impressed, I turned my attention to the rest of the room; it was a simple but well-constructed building with mostly evenly sized layered wooden planks nailed together used to make up the bulk of the walls. Kate had even managed to make small square glass windows to let some light in which seemed like a nice touch. Unlit torches lined the walls, presumably to be used in the evening when natural light wouldn't cut it. The furnishings were pretty simplistic; a couple of large chests for storage, a chair and a couple of tables, one covered in various materials such as wood, stone and some kind of metal, probably iron. In one corner of the room was a large oven which seemed to double up as a kind of smelter with what seemed almost like blacksmith's tools strewn untidily around it. The bed I was lying on had a wooden base with a 'mattress' made out of wool. In one corner of the room, there was a large metal bucket with a lid on it; I could only assume it was full of drinking water from the water-stained patches of wooden flooring surrounding it.

Nothing seemed to be there that didn't need to be, even if I didn't understand some items' purposes, and nothing was more lavish than necessary. Looking down, I noticed another smaller bucket on the floor, about a third full of water mixed with what I assumed was my blood. She wasted a lot of her water on me, I felt quite guilty about that despite there being a basically unlimited supply nearby. On the back wall, there was a large wooden cover over a moderately sized natural passage – perhaps a cave of some sort. Through the gaps between planks, I could only see a grey stone wall and I couldn't work out what it was for at all. I soon stopped thinking about it however and just lay back and closed my eyes so that I could catch up on some sleep since I was in relative comfort for once.

I woke up in much greater comfort than I had fallen asleep to earlier. I opened my eyes to see Tom, David, and Sam standing over me accompanied by the familiar rocking sensation of the yacht. I was back in my bedroom on the boat. The comforting faux-wooden walls surrounded me and the few windows on one side had their Venetian blinds open, flooding the room with a bright, white light. The light hurt my eyes, but I appreciated the comfort it offered. My previous practical and dull surrounding had been replaced by the yacht's modern and comfortable bedroom. I checked my wounds; they were both gone along with all of my more minor cuts and bruises. Confused, I quickly sat up to talk to my friends.

Tom laughed, clearly enjoying my bewilderment. "Mate, you look like death. Had a bit too much last night?"

I sat on my bed blankly staring at them for a while before explaining what had happened. I told them about waking up on the island without them, being shot with an arrow by something as yet unexplained and meeting Kate. They looked very perplexed by my story and seemed to think I was crazy. Sam explained to me that we had just gotten insanely drunk and eventually fallen asleep as normal. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened and my horrible experience must have just been a dream.

I breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Fucking hell. That explains a lot." Sam was always the one to believe about what had actually happened after all.

"Oh, by the way, there's someone here to see you, Mark." David looked out of the door into the bright light and beckoned for someone to come through. "Her name's Kate, she seems pretty cool." Kate walked through the door.

"Mark, come on. Get up. You need to eat something." Completely baffled, I just stared at her and tried to form words; nothing was coming out of my mouth. "Hey, Mark? Wake up." I felt something tap my shoulder. Instantly I opened my eyes and lifted my head up in shock. Kate lurched backwards, "Bloody hell, you nearly knocked me out!"

I looked around, I was back. Back in the simple wooden building on the same island I was on before, now lit up by the warm orange glow of the torches. I checked my wounds and found them back where they were before. Letting out a big sigh, I lay back down. "Fuck."

"I thought you'd be happy to see me," Kate said, "I even cooked you some food like the good housewife I apparently am." She grinned and handed me a small wooden plank, acting as a plate, with two perfectly cooked pork chops on it. "I know it's not exactly silver service, but you need to eat something."

"Sorry, you just surprised me. Thank you," I shyly replied as I sat up and took the food from her. She had also made some for herself and we both tucked in.

We ate in silence for a while until she began to question me. "How long have you been here? I've never seen anyone else here."

"Literally just over a day."

"Makes sense. Any clue how you got here?"

"Not in the slightest."

"How do you have no idea? _Surely _you were present for the event?"

I awkwardly cleared my throat and muttered "Well. I _was_ quite drunk."

"Right. That's no bloody help, I was hoping you might be able to tell me where the hell we are."

"You mean _you_ don't know?" I asked, upset that she was as clueless as I. She simply shrugged her shoulders. "How long have you been here?"

Her eyes glazed over a little as she went into thought. "What year is it?"

Hesitating slightly, surprised that this wasn't an easy question for her to answer herself, I replied, "June 2017."

"That would mean that I've been here for…" her eyes darted back and forth as she did some quick maths in her head. "About five years, I think. Give or take."

_Five years!_ She hadn't found a way out of this for five years. I didn't say anything, but sat stunned at her answer.

She paused for a moment as well before she remembered something. With her mouth full of food, her eyes briefly widened and she made a sound to get my attention. Quickly swallowing her food, she indicated to the corner of the room, in which sat a severely damaged but just about intact suitcase, and said, "I found this on the beach near where I found you, figured it was yours. Hopefully you won't have to make your own clothes for a while like I did." As it turned out it was David's suitcase but, fortunately, most of his clothes fit me anyway, even if I did hate wearing them. The suitcase wasn't good news for me though, despite what Kate thought. It meant that I might not have been the only one on the yacht to suffer.

Ignoring my depressing realisation, I thanked her profusely and we sat in awkward silence for a little while until I thought to innocuously ask her how she ended up on this island all that time ago. She seemed to pause and think for some time.

"To give you the long and short of it, I was on holiday in Mallorca with…" she hesitated before shaking her hands, gesturing to ignore that bit. "No, no. I was on holiday and had rented a boat for a few hours. I was having a great time. We had dropped anchor for a bit to lounge in the sun and, for no apparent reason, this ridiculous storm came in. There was no warning at all, I couldn't do anything about it. The boat was almost instantly capsized and I was knocked the fuck out. When I woke up, I was here."

"You said 'we'." I stated unassuredly. "Who was the other?"

"Did I?" She thought for a moment. "Don't worry about it, not worth getting into," she quickly said as she stood up, swiped my now empty wooden 'plate' away from me, and turned away to put it somewhere else.

She sat back next to me and we remained in an awkward silence for a moment. She was in a fairly deep thought but clearly didn't want to discuss what about. The storm must have been more traumatic than she was letting on.

"Your friend back at the stream came in handy by the way," she said to break the silence. "I'll be able to get a few of the buggers with its arrows." I didn't want to press the other issue any further. She clearly wasn't comfortable talking about whatever the issue was with me. In any case, I was interested to know exactly what had shot me.

"You're welcome? Who exactly are the 'buggers' that shot me?"

"Oh Jesus. You really don't know anything about this place do you?" I just shook my head timidly. I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to know now. Kate, obviously about to enter into a serious conversation, came and sat down next to me. "Right." She thought about her next words carefully. "You're in for a bit of a shock and you're probably not going to want to believe me at first. You have to understand that I'm completely telling the truth; your arm is a testament to that." She waited for a response, I nervously nodded in agreement. "I don't know how else to describe the things that come out at night here other than… monsters."

I gave her a look of utter confusion. "Monsters?" I replied in disbelief, thanking the Lord that I didn't go out of my shelter the night before. I had no idea what to say; if I hadn't encountered one myself, I would have thought she had gone insane.

"See? You don't believe me, do you? What shot you was a human skeleton brought to life. You'll also find zombies, giant spiders and…" She hesitated, carefully picking her words, "these silent green bastards that explode if they get too close. I guess I haven't really had reason to come with a name for them." She looked at me for some sort of reaction but I was absolutely speechless. It sounded like she was completely taking the piss but what she described perfectly explained what I'd seen on my first night.

I hesitated and stuttered but eventually managed to say, "And these things only come out at night?"

"Yeah. The zombies and skeletons burn up in the sunlight for some reason. This neckerchief isn't just a fashion statement," she lightly smirked and briefly pulled it up to show me, "I don't want to breathe their shitty fumes in every time one of them burns up."

"What about the other two?"

"The spiders seem to become less aggressive in the day for whatever reason. The green things are just complete bastards whatever the time. I'm not sure why they don't seem to appear in the day since they don't burn up, but I'm bloody glad they don't. That is unless someone is near them, in which case they'll stick around just to be dicks. The zombies and skeletons tend to hide under the shelter of trees in the mornings, like that arsehole that shot you, so be careful."

This was a lot to take in, I tried to quiz her more on this subject but, unfortunately, she had few answers. She had no idea why these monsters were around in the first place or why the skeletons or zombies were set alight when exposed to sunlight. She did explain the presence of the windows and torches, however. She used the windows as a way to safely examine her surroundings before leaving, meaning she could get the jump on the monsters rather than them getting the jump on her. The torches were there as a deterrent for the monsters at night; while they weren't killed by the torchlight, they weren't exactly fond of it.

I sat back and tried to take in everything Kate had just told me. We sat in silence for a while, Kate trying to figure out what I was thinking and me having very few coherent thoughts anyway.

"I know it's fucking mental and slightly terrifying," Kate said after a short while, "But don't worry about it for now. You're safe here, and when the time comes that you actually have to meet these things, I'll be there to guide you through everything." This was actually quite reassuring, despite the fact that I didn't exactly plan on fighting these 'monsters' in the first place. "Now, you sit back and rest. I'm going to get some sleep; I've got to bloody work for a living tomorrow." She grinned and stood up. "You take the bed. I'll have the chair. I won't be far away if you need me" I thanked her profusely for everything and tried to do as she suggested. I mostly spent the night thinking over everything she had just told me though.


	4. Chapter Three: The Learning Curve

Chapter Three: The Learning Curve

Sunrise, 21st June

"Right Mark, let's check those wounds. Today could be the big day!" Kate had been eagerly waiting for me to get better and start collecting resources for the past few days because she wasn't fond of collecting nearly double the resources by herself. She'd been checking the wounds on my arm and leg daily to see how quickly they had healed. The leg was probably fine the day before but she didn't want me going out with a damaged arm. In her words, I 'would have only been a bloody liability.' I was ok with that; the longer I could keep away from the creatures outside, the better. My time was boring but at least it was safe. Kate was good at keeping me fed and didn't seem to resent my presence, likely because I represented some semblance of human contact that she had sorely lacked over the past few years. She'd even let me keep the bed and had made a new one for herself.

Unfortunately, today looked like I wasn't going to be relaxing anymore; my arm was already feeling better. Of course, I wasn't going to admit that just in case Kate decided otherwise.

She unravelled the bandage and with a look of surprise said "Wow, I think you're ok. You're a bloody fast healer I'll give you that."

"Yeah," I said depressively, "Unfortunately I always have been." This had always worked out in my favour in the past, any cuts and bruises would be gone ridiculously quickly compared to everyone else. I had no idea why this was the case but I was cursing it now. I'd been left with a couple of grim scars where the wounds once were but other than that I was basically fine.

"Don't take that attitude, you'll finally be getting out of the house!" She seemed to wait for me to show some happiness at this. When I didn't, she took a more serious but comforting tone. "Mark, I'll show you everything you need to know. You'll be fine." Surprisingly this did actually make me feel slightly better about everything.

"Alright, thanks. I guess," I said reluctantly.

"Good! Now get up, I've got a present for you." She stepped back and revealed a rusting iron sword leaning up against the wall near her bow. When I looked slightly underwhelmed, she explained it a bit more. "Ok I'll be honest, I didn't make it for you; it's my old sword. Should still help you defend yourself though."

"You want me to attack these things with a sword? Are we living in the past?" I'd had no experience wielding a sword; obviously I'd never needed to.

"Basically, yes. When we're trying to survive, we have to make do I'm afraid." She slung her bow over her neck and across her body. "First things first, I'm going to check the outside's clear. Stay put for now." As she moved to look through the windows, I picked up the sword. It was fairly crudely made; the wooden handle had clearly seen some use and appeared to have been damaged by water and general use over its time. The blade was relatively thin and fairly short. It looked like it would have been relatively well made at first, but time had clearly taken its toll as the base was alarmingly rusty and the whole blade was worryingly blunt. I gently ran my finger down it disappointedly, it wouldn't be able to threaten warm butter.

Kate turned back to me after confirming that it was probably safe outside and noticed my dissatisfaction. "I know it's not much, but it's better than nothing, right?" I reluctantly agreed and she handed me a small iron ring to attach to my trousers so that I could sheath the sword. Kate was significantly better equipped than me; she had her long bow complete with a leather quiver full of arrows, her protective leather overcoat and what looked like a relatively new and sharp iron sword, complete with a leather scabbard. At least that meant she couldn't expect me to do much fighting.

"I'm going to head out there. I'll call you out if it's safe," She instructed as she drew her sword and carefully opened the front door. She slowly walked outside, checking the space around her and keeping her sword at the ready. After a short while, she called me outside to join her. I calmly followed her, confident that she would know if something was outside.

Once I got to her, she casually pointed towards a nearby tree. I immediately panicked and drew my sword. "What the fuck is that?!" The figure was standing bolt upright under the shade of the tree. Its sickeningly green skin diverting attention from its more human features. Dried blood ran down from its jaw and from its multiple cuts and gashes around its body. Its arms stretched forwards and it stared at me with its dead eyes, lusting to attack, but intelligently knowing it couldn't.

"That, my friend, is a zombie," Kate said calmly, "It knows it can't leave the shadow of the tree otherwise it'll die. It seems like we got lucky and you can have a practice. There's fuck all it will be able to do If you play your cards right." Refusing to let the zombie out of my sight, I could see out of the corner of my eye that she was happily smiling at me. "Now, you don't want to get too close to it, but you should basically be able to do what you want to the poor guy." I tentatively started taking steps towards the creature, sword raised, expecting it to lunge forward at me at any moment. It certainly noticed me moving towards it but knew it couldn't do anything about it. Kate moved at the same pace but a couple of steps behind, giving me advice as we went. "Just remember, it may not look like you're hurting the thing, but you are. Just keep at it and it will eventually die." I felt slightly better about everything with her just behind me, I was still scared shitless though. As I got within stabbing range, presumably just outside of the zombie's attacking range, Kate stopped me. "Alright, go for it," she muttered.

I timidly raised my sword higher, the zombie staring at me dead in the eyes the entire time. It was off-putting, to say the least. I hesitated for a few seconds, not quite believing what I was doing, until Kate gently nudged me, telling me to carry on. With all of my might, I swung the sword down towards the zombie, slashing it down its chest creating a huge cut down the middle. Blood started to pour out but the zombie was completely unfazed. It remained emotionless; the same cannot be said for me. The sight of it made me feel horrible, I had to seriously stop myself from turning away and throwing up. I held my hand over my mouth and hunched over as I desperately wretched. "See? It doesn't give a shit," Kate said, not noticing the state I was in. "Keep at it."

I tried to regain my composure and pulled my sword back for a stab. Quickly lunging the sword forward, I stabbed the zombie's stomach and pulled the sword back out immediately, paranoid that the zombie would suddenly start attacking me. Again, it barely seemed to notice the gaping wound I had left it. I must have looked disheartened because Kate said, "You're doing well! One more hit should do it I reckon." Reassured, but still not feeling great, I lifted the sword up and over my right shoulder. Kate moved away from me, understandably believing that there was a very real chance that the swing could go awry. I mustered all of the strength I could and swung the sword diagonally down from right to left, shouting as I went. The sword slammed into the zombie's neck and lodged in its spine, blood shot out of it in all directions. The sudden stop shocked me and made me release my grip on the sword as the zombie collapsed into a heap on the floor. For a moment, I stared at the corpse that I had just created in an effort to make sure that it wasn't about to come back to life and ruin my day further.

After some persuasion by Kate, I bent down slightly, grabbed the handle of the sword and pulled with all of my might, freeing the sword but also pulling the zombie towards me, partially out of the tree's shadow and into the sunlight. It almost instantly burst into flames, throwing up smoke and kicking out a huge amount of heat. I heard Kate's muffled voice shouting, "Get away from there!" I did as she said and quickly moved but not before I inhaled some of the smoke. The smell was repulsive and truly disgusting, the absolute worst thing I had ever smelled. It was so awful that I dropped my sword and keeled over, retching with my eyes watering. I had to really work to not throw up for a good few minutes.

It didn't take long for the corpse to burn up completely, but the smell lingered. I crawled further away and collapsed on the floor while attempting to keep my insides inside of me.

Kate strolled over to me and lightly slapped my back, "Yeah, that's why I have this thing." She said, lightly tugging her neckerchief that she'd raised to cover her mouth and nose. "Good job though; I wouldn't exactly say you're a natural, but you'll get there." I looked up at her, dishevelled, as she lowered her neckerchief and gave me a small smile, "Come on, we've got more to do today. You're going to get our food for the evening."

Before we left the zombie remains, Kate quickly went back to the shelter to pick up a moderately sized leather sack to carry food in. I didn't know exactly what 'getting our food for the evening' entailed though; I hadn't once thought about how she got the food we'd been eating over the past few days. Nevertheless, once I had recovered from the zombie ordeal, Kate led me to a hill overlooking a remarkably open plain not too far away. No trees in sight, just the lush green grass blowing in the wind. It was full of somewhat small wild pigs happily frolicking in the sun, no cares in the world whatsoever. Kate spread her arms, indicating towards the plain, and happily said, "Here we are."

I stared into the plain for a while before I realised what she wanted and looked back at her. "No," I flatly stated.

"I'm afraid so," she immediately replied, predicting my attitude.

"I can't. There's no way." I gazed at the pigs. They looked so happy and innocent. "No."

"If you don't then we don't eat tonight." Kate suddenly sounded stricter than before.

I closed my eyes and put my hands over my face, thinking about what to do. I couldn't find any way out of it. "Fuck," I muttered as I opened my eyes and reluctantly walked down towards the innocent group of pigs. Neither of us said anything as we approached.

One of them calmly wandered over me and looked straight up at me. It was completely unafraid. I turned towards Kate and pleaded, "Couldn't we spread the senseless murder out over a few days?" I was partly joking and partly hoping for the best.

She gave me a stern response. "No. You need to do this. You can't be relying on me constantly."

Knowing that she was right, I sighed and drew my sword. The pig remained relaxed; It just seemed to be incredibly interested in what I was doing.

Moving around to the side of it, I raised my sword so that the tip was facing directly downwards. With my other hand, I held the pig in place. It didn't seem to mind at all; it just watched my movements with naïve interest. I glanced over to Kate who was making gestures for me to do it. With a deep breath, I forced the sword down as hard as I could. It went straight down into its neck, but I hit the side and missed anything major. The pig squealed in agony and tried to run away but Kate ran in from the side and stopped it. Blood spattered down my front and across the grass below as I tried to go for another hit. The sounds it made as I lifted my sword up were horrible, it was terrified and in complete shock. It tried its best to escape but Kate kept it still. I thrust the sword down again, this time going through the centre of its neck and killing it instantly, finally silencing its tortured cries.

I held the sword there for a moment, embedded in the pig's neck. Staring down at what I had just done, I eventually let go of the sword, almost involuntarily, letting the pig drop on its side and taking the sword with it. I stood there for a while glaring at my work until Kate stood next to me and patted me on the shoulder, saying, "Well done. Don't worry, it eventually gets easier." I didn't really listen to her, I just stared down at the mutilated innocent animal.

After a short time of silence, Kate spoke gently to me. "I'm afraid you're really not going to like what comes next. You're going to need your sword." Completely silently, I walked around to the other side, knelt down, put one hand on the sword's handle and the other on the pig's blood-soaked body. I groaned as I tugged at the sword to pull it out of its neck. With a large amount of effort, I managed to pull the sword free causing blood to spatter across the ground next to it.

"What the fuck am I doing?" I muttered under my breath to myself in a moment of realisation. I continued to kneel next to the massacred pig for a while, sickened by myself. I looked around the plain to find that all of the other pigs were running away or watching the slaughter from afar. It may not seem like it should have been a huge deal, but actually having to murder the pig was horrible. I'd never killed anything more than a fly at home and here I was stabbing pigs through the neck. This was a horrible place.

Kate knelt so that she was on my level on the other side of the pig. "Now the really bad part," she began. I looked away from the pig and up at her. She beckoned me over to her side of the pig; the stomach. I did as she asked but she could clearly see I was having a hard time. "I'm going to need you to… _Retrieve_ the edible parts of the pig." She indicated towards the belly of the pig. "In fact, I do have a smaller knife you can use. Might make things easier." She reached into the inside of her overcoat and unsheathed a small but extremely sharp and deadly looking knife, more of a dagger. The blade itself was remarkably clean but the wooden handle and leather grip looked severely bloodstained; this knife was clearly used for this often.

She handed me the knife which I extremely reluctantly took. She took me through the whole process, indicating the best parts to cut out and what I should definitely leave, but ultimately the deed had to be done by me. After the lecture, I positioned myself so that I was leaning over the remains and slowly plunged the knife in. The resistance the flesh put up was horrific and made me feel nauseous but I carried on regardless. I managed to carve out a few disgusting chunks of bloody pork and handed them to Kate who put them in her sack. I was probably incredibly wasteful but, at this point, I didn't particularly care, I was completely disillusioned with life at that moment. After an awfully long time, I was done and feeling sickened. I dropped the knife on the floor, stood up and started to walk away.

"There's still this…" Kate started to say before I turned around and shot her a glare of pure anger and frustration. "Never mind." She quietly repositioned herself and cut out the final bits of pork herself while I moved away and stared into the distance at the rest of the pigs while taking in as much air as I could. This was just about the worst day I'd ever had and it was only just approaching midday.

Once Kate was done, she carefully walked over to me to try to lift up my spirits. "Your first kill is never easy, I know. I would've been pretty worried about you if you didn't react like this. But either way, we have to do it if we want to survive."

I slowly turned to look at her, about to launch into a tirade of explanations about my feelings. When I realised that she had talked about sheer survival, I stopped myself and replied apologetically. "Sorry. I'll be fine." I was still clearly miserable but I figured that Kate didn't need me being a burden.

"Don't try to cover up your reservations, I know exactly what you're going through. When I first got here it took me nearly a week of starving myself before I managed to do it. Even then I got the tiniest amount of food from it." Kate said with a gentle smile which I reciprocated. "Now come on, we've got to hurry up if we want to finish on time today."

We moved on with my head hanging low, blood on my hands – both literally and figuratively – and tired. Kate was in a significantly better mood, as was expected, but she'd become somewhat jaded to life here over the years. We were heading more in the direction of the shelter now but stopped while we were still about a ten-minute walk away from it.

"Now you have the lovely job of collecting wood for us," Kate instructed.

I sarcastically laughed as she opened one side of her overcoat, revealing a relatively small iron axe tied to her waist using a small hide loop around the handle. She grabbed the head and in one swift motion threw it up in front of her and caught the handle.

"This is for you." She held it towards me and smiled. Unenthusiastically, I grabbed the axe and had a look at it. It had obviously been heavily used, the wooden handle was very weathered and splitting at some points, but the head looked to have been sharpened very recently and was generally well taken care of. It was surprisingly well made; the head wasn't merely tied to the handle like I would have expected from a survivalist, it was cast with a hole down the centre, meaning the handle could continue up through the middle and be topped by a stopper, making it much more strongly secured in place. It probably wasn't her first attempt at making an axe.

"Let's get the strange bits out of the way first," Kate began. "These trees… They don't have any roots." I shot her a particularly confused look. "Yeah, it's weird; fuck knows how they stand up. It does mean, however, that you can take the whole bloody tree up pretty easily." I really did not understand this place. It seemed to make general nods to reality while coming up with completely bizarre physics elsewhere.

Kate told me to get to chopping down a few trees in the area; she made it sound infinitely easier than it actually was. I asked her when I should finish, she gave the particularly unhelpful answer of 'when it starts getting dark.'

She briefly came back with a clean bag to fill with logs before leaving again, saying that she was going to go and work in her mine. Initially not paying attention to that comment, I realised as soon as she'd gone that she said she had a mine. Had five years made a fully-fledged mine a necessity? It was hard to comprehend.

After not coming up with any way out of this work, I lined up the axe against a tree and swung with all of my might, making a pitifully small cut in the trunk. I felt the handle of the axe bend and deform slightly as I did so but continued on regardless. Swinging again resulted in a complete miss of the original cut making a near-identical cut a few centimetres above it. This was going to take a long time.

It took me about an hour to hack away at the tree enough for it to finally fall over. It wasn't a huge tree so the fall wasn't particularly dramatic. I spent an awfully long time cutting the leaves and smaller branches off the tree before I could start chopping up the trunk itself. All in all, the whole process took me far too many hours for just one tree. After chucking the chopped-up logs into the bag I lay down for a while, exhausted.

I just shut my eyes and thought about everything. I wanted desperately to go home; I wanted to turn away, say 'fuck you' to this island and leave it all behind. If I could get back to university I wouldn't complain about a thing, life would be so simple in comparison. I wanted to see my friends and my family again. If I could see Lucy again I would tell her exactly how much she meant to me and I would never let her go. I missed her so much; my thoughts would drift back to her every time I got a moment vague peace and quiet.

I must have stayed with these thoughts for longer than expected. From the distance, I heard Kate shouting at me. "Mark! Get the fuck up! The bloody sun's setting!" I immediately opened my eyes to see her run up to me. As I was clumsily standing up, she grabbed my arm and aggressively pulled me to me feet. "We'll leave the logs here until tomorrow, let's fucking go!" She swiped the axe from my hand and shunted me in the direction of the shelter. I followed Kate's commands and started sprinting there as we both drew our swords, keeping an eye out for any monsters.

After a short time of running, a zombie appeared from the shadows to our right; I couldn't maintain my pace and avoid it so I got ready to attack but, before I had a chance to even ready my sword, Kate had overtaken me and charged it, slicing down its front with one clean strike and quickly bringing her sword back up through its arm, dispatching the poor thing extraordinarily quickly. We kept running, Kate now some way behind me as she occasionally slowed to expertly dispatch a monster. I glanced back to see Kate duck under an arrow that was heading straight for her head without breaking stride, then sprinting up to the skeleton that loosed it to cut it down. It was incredible to watch but I forced myself to ignore what she was doing and keep going.

We had almost made it back when I heard Kate yelling at me, "Mark! Left! Fucking left!" I looked left and briefly saw one of the green bastards Kate told me about. It started to make a hissing sound and its skin appeared to pulse white. I just completely froze up, unable to do anything about it. It seemed moments from exploding when an arrow slammed into what I could only assume was its head, completely interrupting its apparent countdown. The creature was pushed back a couple of feet but soon regained its balance and returned to its bloodlust charge. The hiss started back up again as its eyes focused in on me and its green skin began to pulse white once more. I managed to regain the use of my legs and ran away from it as fast as I could but, despite its four stumpy legs, it was faster. The hissing got louder and its sequential footsteps grew hauntingly closer. Another arrow flew towards it, striking true in its centre mass.

It wasn't enough. The creature was pushed back but, in its dying breath, set itself off. The explosion lit up the immediate area in a bright orange light as the immense heat passed over me. I was just far enough away for the shockwave to only make me stumble, but the heat charred my clothes and gave my back some relatively light burns. Dirt from the once flat ground was thrown across the landscape and pelted me, but I kept running towards the shelter, the adrenaline helping me to ignore any pain.

I looked over towards Kate who was aiming her bow at the space the monster had once taken and shouting, "Get to the fucking house!"

It was a short distance to the shelter from there, but monsters seemed to be coming out of every corner now. I could see the warm orange glow of the torches bursting through the windows of the shelter; the safety beckoned. I had my sights set on the door that Kate had left slightly ajar.

Noticing movement up high, I glanced upwards and just about caught sight of a huge spider that was about twice my size dropping down on me from on top of the shelter. I Panicked and jumped out of the way as I wildly swung my sword. One of my manic flails managed to cut through one of the spider's enormous legs as it was descending, giving me just about enough time to barge through the front door and collapse on the floor in the process, my arm narrowly missing the blade of my own sword. I turned to face the door as soon as possible and saw the spider, now more angry than hindered by its missing leg, trying to find its way through a front door much too narrow for it to fit through. I watched in terror, horrified that it would manage to get through until Kate gave it a powerful kick to its side and stabbed the beast straight through its head, instantly killing it. She bolted through the door and slammed it shut, nearly shaking it out of its frame.

We stayed nearly motionless; me on the floor a few feet from the door and Kate leaning against a wall next to the door, both of us gasping and wheezing. We didn't have the energy to move for some time. Hearing the monsters outside attempting to find a way in was disconcerting but we ignored it and tried to catch our breath. Our silence was eventually broken by Kate, still having to take heavy breaths between most of her words.

"Mark. What the fuck was that?" I didn't have a response; I was too tired for my brain to function properly and I just didn't know what I could say. As she slowly regained her breath she began to shout. "You would have fucking died out there had I not come out to get your sorry arse!" She took a deep breath. "We could have _both_ died out there because of you!" She moved so that she was towering over me. She could be very intimidating when she wanted to be. "You were just daydreaming out there were you? Enjoying your time in the fucking sun?" Making wild hand gestures, she started to angrily pace the room, "This isn't school anymore, Mark. You can't just take a bloody nap whenever you feel like it! This is serious, but you don't seem to realise it! You need to get your fucking act together! You know where this shit gets us? Stuck in a crowded hut with no bloody resources, that's where!" She continued like this for about ten minutes. It was horrible, I felt horrible. She'd put some trust in me and I completely let her down; nearly getting us killed. I was running through excuses in my head but I came up completely blank, there was no reason I could explain to her that would make it ok. I wasn't sure that being depressed about the situation I was in would be a good excuse for her. I just lay on the floor and took the well-deserved abuse. After a while, her voice calmed a bit and she solemnly said, "Are you even listening to me?"

I sat up and quickly said, "Yes. I'm so sorry. Words can't describe how much of a dick I feel right now." I knew that I wouldn't be able to make things right but I tried to give it a shot at least.

"No," Kate said, followed by a long pause. "You're not a dick. I know you're not used to this, but you just can't do that. If you keep making mistakes this island _will_ kill you, and I don't want that to happen. I'm enjoying having company for once. Even if my company is a bit dim." She gave me a quick teary-eyed, weak smile and moved closer to me before returning to her serious words. "I know it's hard, but you really have to understand the dangers of this place if you want to live. Sorry for shouting, but this is really important." I knew I'd be able to regain her trust if I tried harder in the future. I made sure to thank her for saving me again about three times in the past half hour.

We cooked and ate in relative silence that evening. I still felt guilty about butchering and eating that pig but I wasn't about to mention it to her now. She eventually managed to compose herself after eating and started to ask me questions about my life back home, likely out of boredom. I told her about my fairly well-off London-born family and the friends that I had lost on my family's yacht, at the mention of which she half-jokingly called me a 'posh twat'. I also told her an awful lot about Lucy. I may have rambled on a bit but it felt good to vent about everything; I was miserable and I needed to talk to someone about it. Not that anything could be done but it just made me feel slightly better about everything. Kate was surprisingly good at listening to my venting despite today's events. Once I was done moaning, I got around to asking her about her life at home.

She thought for a while, clearly choosing her words carefully. It didn't seem as though she liked talking about her past too much. "I'm from Gloucestershire originally, from a family of four. We lived in a pretty nice house on a farm, although it probably would have been a fucking shed compared to your swanky bloody house. I didn't really enjoy farming though, so I moved down to Oxford when I was 20 and had A-Levels under my belt. I ended up taking a job at a local pub to pay my way; there I met…" She hesitated, uncharacteristically unsure of herself. "I met my husband."

_Fuck,_ I thought to myself, not prepared for that answer. I was just idly asking questions to pass the time, I didn't intend to bring up a husband she probably wouldn't have seen since she arrived on the island. I didn't quite know how to deal with her suddenly being open and vulnerable. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry," I said, not being able to think of anything else.

"No. It's fine." She replied, staring into space. "I just miss him. I really miss him. I wish I could just be back at home with him." I felt bad for moaning about my troubles, they seemed pretty insignificant since I'd only been on the island for just under a week. "Sorry, I'm still supposed to be mad at you." She said with a small nervous laugh.

"Just call me a twat and you'll feel better," I said with a smile.

"Alright, will do." She smiled back at me before standing up, "We should probably get some sleep. You've got a big day tomorrow." I let out a nervous chuckle as she said that. I was very worried by what she meant.

I nervously questioned her, "Big day?"

"You'll find out tomorrow, you twat." She sniggered and began to get ready to sleep as I did the same.


	5. Chapter Four: Discovery

Chapter Four: Discovery

Sunrise, 22nd June

I dreamt about Lucy again that night. Nearly every time I closed my eyes, I was transported back home once more. I was happy there. Lucy was with me and everything was back to the way it should be. It was as if I'd never left for that stupid bloody holiday. It was the same dream every time as well, though I never felt any familiarity at the time.

We'd be at my university house sitting on the sofa in my small, drab, but oddly comforting living room in front of the television. Whatever we were watching was never important to me, I just enjoyed being there; her head resting on my shoulder, her long, straight blonde hair draped down my arm as we both stared out of the window at the storm outside. We could see bright bolts of lightning and hear the crashes of thunder; being inside while this was all going on was comforting in a way. I'd always loved storms, there was something beautiful in their raw power; I would always be able to watch them for hours. The rain was pounding against the building but we didn't care, we were safe inside. The warmth of her body against mine was all I needed. It was perfect.

Then I would wake up in a hastily made and uncomfortable bed on an island that's constantly trying to get me killed in a variety of ways and accompanied by a woman who likely didn't trust me anymore because I'd royally fucked up the day before. The horrible monsters making disgusting sounds outside were slowly becoming as familiar as my own heartbeat. The word 'depressed' didn't quite cut it for representing my feelings that morning. The only thing keeping me going was the blind hope that I'd be able to go back home some time soon.

I made sure to wake up early. I knew I'd have to go and collect the wood I had left out in the open the day before and I wanted to start to make amends with Kate. Previously I'd relied on Kate to wake me up on time (me being used to waking up basically whenever I wanted to at home) but from this day I was going to try to be better at this. Kate seemed at least somewhat impressed, even going so far as to say that maybe I wasn't such a 'lazy bastard' after all.

I went out by myself since I was just carrying logs back in the daylight so there shouldn't have been too much trouble. I did encounter another zombie hiding underneath a tree, but I thought I'd just leave him be. We weren't causing each other any trouble.

After getting slightly lost along the way – only managing to find my way there because of the crater that the exploding monster had made – I eventually made it to the sack full of the logs I'd chopped up the previous day. The logs themselves seemed oddly light, so I managed to swing the sack over my shoulder and carry them back without a huge amount of trouble. The whole thing was heavy, but not nearly as heavy as I expected it to be. I convinced myself that my few days I'd spent at the gym that one January straight after New Year were the reason I found it ok, but it was more likely because the trees on this island were just really strange.

I got back to the shelter about three-quarters of an hour after I left. As I accidentally slammed the door against the wall and clumsily hauled the sack of logs through the front door, I noticed the thick wooden panel on the back wall had been moved to the side to reveal a narrow but extremely long passage down. I had no idea where it led but I figured it had something to do with the 'big day' Kate had planned for me. I dumped the logs off in a corner of the shelter and had a peek into the stairwell. The cave wasn't huge but seemed to go down a long way. Kate had lit up the walls with torch sconces to provide a good amount of light and had also carved out some form of steps in the rock to make the descent easier. I had started to walk down them, knowing that I'd regret it when I had to go back up them later, when Kate shouted up at me from further within.

"Hey! Is that you, Mark?" She asked, having heard me noisily moving the logs around upstairs.

"Nope, I'm a zombie. Just thought I'd pop down here for some breakfast."

"Ha ha, very funny." She replied with huge amounts of sarcasm. "Now get down here; I've got an exciting day planned for you!"

I did as I was told and walked down the rest of the hundred or so stone steps. They looked like they had been painstakingly carved out of the naturally occurring stone; there were imperfections here and there but in general they were very well carved, if a bit steep. The centre of each step had become smooth and sloped from heavy use though, meaning that I nearly came tumbling down them on multiple occasions.

Reaching the bottom of the steps revealed a small opening in the cave. Kate had covered off the rest of the apparently expansive cave with a solid wooden wall and placed an imposing iron door in its centre. Through the bars in its window about halfway up, I could see that the dark cave continued much, much further. This all must have taken an awfully long time to make. In the room, there were multiple wooden storage containers dotted around the edges as well as a workbench of sorts that appeared to be used for making her tools. On the walls, there were tool racks with pickaxes and shovels, all with various levels of use and in no particular order.

When I came down, Kate was rifling through one of the storage containers.

"Did you get the logs?" She said without even glancing at me

"Hello to you too." I thought I was being funny, Kate shot me a look that told me otherwise. "Yeah, it was no problem. They're all up top."

"Good, could you fetch me a small one?"

I stopped in place for a moment with a face like thunder. "You're joking."

"No… I need to make a new handle for this pickaxe." She picked up an old iron pickaxe from the floor next to her. The head was basically fine, nothing more than a few dents and scratches, but the wooden handle had been used so much that it had bent out of shape and looked as though one more use would cause it to snap completely.

I sighed and very begrudgingly turned around to walk out and back up to the surface. As I did so, I started half-sarcastically moaning a bit. "You couldn't have told me when I was only halfway down the stairs, could you? Nope! You had to wait until I was all the way at the bottom!"

From the bottom of the passage, Kate shouted back, "Calm your tits, a bit of exercise will do your fat arse some good!" I ignored that comment and carried on. The climb back up was, as suspected, agonising. I considered myself reasonably fit, but this was a trial. I had no idea how Kate managed to use this on a regular basis without wanting to kill herself.

It took a long time but, eventually, I managed to reach the top, collect a solitary log, and stumble back down the steps. Exhausted, I handed her the log and she began chopping and sanding it down to make a handle for the old pickaxe head. I wasn't focusing on her process at the all because I was shattered. Thankfully, this took a fair amount of time meaning I could sit in the corner and recover from the trial I had just undergone.

Once she was done, Kate looked back at me and said, "Come on, Mark! You're supposed to be youthful and energetic!"

I looked up at her with a distressed face and just said, "No," while dramatically exhaling.

"Kids these days, huh? Don't know they're born."

I chuckled and allowed Kate to pull me to my feet so that she could reveal her plan.

"I've got an exciting day for you. We're going to have a wonderful day of mining!" Kate said, trying to sound as excited as she could. I stared at her for a while in disbelief. Over the past few days, I never would have guessed that mining of all things would be integral to our survival. She seemed to be able to sense this dissatisfaction and so said, "I know it's not terribly fun or exciting, but you can actually find some really cool stuff down here. Give me a second, I'll show you." She eagerly darted off to a container that was separated from the others. Out of it, she pulled a small box – no bigger than ten inches across and five inches tall – and lifted it up to show me. "In this are honestly the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I'm not even sure what they are really; they look a bit like diamonds but they seem even more special than that for some reason. If you see these and still tell me that you're not in the slightest bit interested in this mine, then I will be truly amazed."

She slowly lifted the lid off the box. As I disinterestedly glanced in its direction, I caught a glimpse of a bright blue light flooding out that completely obscured the objects inside. As she opened it further the light exploded out, blinding me instantly. Bolts of agonising pain shot through me. I held my head and keeled over trying to numb the pain as best as I could. Letting out a tortured scream, I stumbled around the room not being able to see nor hear anything of the world around me.

After about a minute of excruciating pain, I heard the crash of thunder and I was transported to a completely different world. The pain was unrelenting as I observed the flesh-coloured landscape around me. Was is really human tissue? It certainly looked that way but I couldn't be sure.

I fell to my knees on a small hill made of the disgusting surface, surrounded by an expansive lake of lava. The space was completely enclosed but lava was falling from the ceiling and completely cutting me off.

I didn't notice it at first, but there was a large ornamental shield propped up on the floor about twenty feet in front of me. The intricate engravings across its face surrounded a central boss that glowed a bright blue, similar to whatever was in Kate's box. Despite the agony, I felt compelled to move towards it.

My joints were seized, but I forced my hands to the soft ground. Each moment was torture as I pushed one hand forward and followed it with a leg to inch ever closer to the shield. As I pushed forward with gritted teeth, trying to keep the pained screams inside, I tried to focus on what was causing the agony. It felt endless yet implacable and vague.

It felt like an eternity, but I reached the shield and stretched my hand towards it. A single touch caused everything to halt. The pain finally ended, the lava stopped in place, and the blue of the shield stopped glowing. After catching my breath, I stumbled to my feet. Feeling that there was nothing better to do, I grabbed the shield in front of me with both hands.

My vision returned as I was hurtling towards a stone wall. I hit it with incredible force and slumped to the floor in agony. I was in a huge amount of pain; my head had a colossal throbbing ache surging through it and I had an intense ringing sensation in my ears meaning I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't do anything but cry out in pain as Kate ran up to me and tried to help. She looked terrified and was desperately trying to talk to me, but I couldn't hear a thing.

After giving up on trying to talk to me she hauled me up, causing me immense pain, and started to lug me up the extensive passage to the shelter. I couldn't even try to help her climb up; I could barely focus on what was happening to me at all. She moved up the stairs surprisingly fast but, even so, it took a long time to climb up the whole way. Once she'd brought me all the way up, she gently dropped me on my bed and sat down next to me absolutely drained. My hearing slowly came back to me on the ascent, but I was still completely dazed and basically unable to function. My head still felt like it was in pieces and my entire body ached. Kate tried to ask me what had happened, but I was completely unable to answer her. She rushed over to her water bucket, filled up her wooden canteen and brought it back to me. Lifting it up to my mouth, she let me take a drink of the refreshing water. This was the first time I'd seen her genuinely panicked; she was rushing around talking about everything and nothing, barely making any sense, trying to find anything that would help me, sadly to no avail.

After about 10 minutes of this, she defeatedly slumped down on the chair next to me.

"I'm so sorry, Mark. I had no idea. I don't know what happened." Remorse flowed through her words as she stuttered and hesitated throughout her sentences. "I honestly thought they just looked cool. I don't know why that happened." She sat completely motionless for a while, deep in thought. She was making a hard decision. "I know I shouldn't leave you like this, I don't want to at all, but I have to get us some resources otherwise we're not eating tonight." She had become very sombre and sounded endlessly regretful. "Just hang in there and I'll be back soon." She put her hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes for a while hoping for a response. When I didn't give her one, she hung her head, slowly collected her gear, and left.

I was left by myself and scared. I didn't know what this whole thing meant. _Was it a vision of some kind? Was I actually there? _I couldn't work out what had happened or if the place was even real. I replayed it in my head over and over again to try and understand everything, but I'd never heard of anything in the world causing something like that to happen. _What on earth had Kate discovered?_

It took Kate a few hours to get back, during which time I could only think about the vision. I was regrettably no more knowledgeable about what it meant than I had been as it happened. I was in significantly less pain than before however and I felt able to finally talk. I looked over to her as she walked through the door holding a sack of food and said, "You were right, those are some pretty special diamonds." She dropped everything she was holding, rushed over and sat down next to me.

"Jesus, Mark! Are you ok?"

"I'll be honest, I've been better."

"What the fuck happened to you?" I explained the whole vision; the shield, the landscape, the pain. Everything. As I explained further, I began to entertain the idea that it was completely nonsensical. It made less sense the more I thought about it.

After I'd told her all I knew, she told me her side of the story.

According to her, as soon as I saw the diamonds my eyes turned completely blue and I stumbled away. I then hunched over and held my head as I screamed and shouted in pain. Once Kate put the lid back on the box of diamonds, about to put it down and try to help me, I stood up completely still and stared at the box. When the box moved, my head moved with it but my eyes stayed central in their sockets; I was completely transfixed. After a couple of minutes of this, a burst of electricity shot around me and I was thrown back against the wall. She said it was like nothing she'd ever seen before. When she looked at the diamonds nothing like that happened; she could gaze at them all day long if she wished.

I only knew one thing for sure, I was never going near that bloody mine again.

My dream that night started off the same as it always did; Lucy and I sitting in blissful silence in my university house with a storm raging safely outside, each bolt of lightning briefly illuminating us and the room, each crash of thunder reminding us that we were perfectly safe inside.

The wind started to howl aggressively outside, tree branches struck the windows and the rain pummelled the building. The thunder and lightning struck more and more frequently as the rain and wind became more violent. At once all of the windows around us smashed and a deluge of unnatural rain filled the room from all sides. The lightning strikes became almost constant and the thunder became deafening. We held each other tightly, just hoping the storm would end. We had no such luck. The walls started to crumble and collapse, letting even more rain in and allowing the lightning to get even closer to us. All we could do was sit in each other's arms, watching the havoc unfold. I looked towards Lucy as she looked back at me; I could see the terror in her deep blue eyes before she buried her head in my embrace. She moved her hand towards her neck and clutched a necklace of some kind. I'd never seen it before which surprised me. I could only see its basic oval shape from the small amount I could see in her hand, but it glowed a soft, almost calming blue.

We stayed in that position as the encircling rain and lightning advanced with parts of the building falling all around us. Lucy looked back up at me, tears streaming down her face, as a huge bolt of lightning struck us.

I screamed and abruptly sat up, waking up Kate on the other side of the torchlit room.

Kate, half asleep and startled, reached for her sword shouting "What? What's happening?!" I looked around, heavily breathing, to find that nothing had changed, everything was as it should be. "Well?" Kate sounded frustrated at being woken up.

I looked over to her with a panicked look, sweat dripping down my face and with a sigh said, "I don't fucking know." Before wiping the sweat off my face and lying back down. "Fuck me…"

"Bloody hell, is this to do with the diamonds?" She sounded genuinely concerned. My look over to her seemed to say it all without any need for words. "I can't tell you how sorry I am for all of this. I swear I had no idea this would happen." I didn't blame her at all, she couldn't have possibly known what would happen, but she seemed to feel endlessly guilty about this. I told her that I would tell her about it in the morning and, after some convincing that I didn't need anything, she went back to sleep. I tried not to however, I really didn't want to sleep knowing that I would probably just have another nightmare like that again. I just lay down with my thoughts and tried to figure out what the hell everything meant. The ordeals that day had left me completely exhausted however and I soon found myself sleeping a fortunately dreamless sleep.


	6. Chapter Five: Rest

Chapter Five Rest

Late afternoon, 23rd June

Kate had woken me up at the crack of dawn that day as usual but, rather than making me get up to help her gather resources, she told me that I was going to stay in the shelter all day. She was still feeling guilty about her diamonds doing what they had done to me and she wanted me to recover. I was quite ok with this; as boring as being back at the shelter was, at least I wouldn't be nearly getting killed by monsters, slaughtering innocent animals, or doing backbreaking work. It genuinely helped as well, my back was still killing me that morning and I had barely got any real sleep the previous night, so it was nice to have some time to not do anything, a rarity by this point. I did try to tell her that I didn't blame her at all for what happened but she wasn't having any of it.

As the day came to a close, Kate was still out but likely heading back to the shelter having collected what she needed to. The sun was about to set on an abnormally uneventful day and I was enjoying my time doing nothing, despite the previous day's events. My back at this point in the day still wasn't perfect but was much better than it had been previously and I'd pushed all thoughts of the visions to the back of my mind. Unfortunately, however, this island didn't seem to be able to let my life be calm and quiet for even one day.

I heard the huge crack of thunder first. The building shook violently and knocked most of Kate's belongings off their surfaces. Several nails in the wooden planks of the building were shaken out and the ends of a couple of bowed planks popped out of their places. I immediately shot out of bed in a panic, about to rush outside to see what on earth had happened. I had started to make motions towards the door when I came across an unnerving smell.

_Burning wood!_

Swearing loudly, I charged outside and hoped that I was imagining all of this. Once I got far enough away from the shelter, I could see the tip of the flames beginning to engulf the building, beginning just above where I had been sitting. I had no idea what to do; I just watched in bewilderment as the flames grew higher and spread across the roof, planks of wood started to break off and fall inside. I was a fair distance from the building but there was still a considerable amount of heat being given off. In the distance I heard Kate shouting at me, I turned around to see her running towards me, horror written across her face.

"What the hell happened?!" She had to shout over the increasing sound of burning wood. "I saw the lightning from fucking ages away!"

"I've got no bloody idea! I was sitting inside and it just happened!" Despite asking me the question, Kate didn't listen to the answer, she just had a blank look on her face as she thought of what to do. The sun had nearly set so the monsters were going to start showing their faces at any moment. Kate quickly looked back and forth across the landscape, looking for anywhere that we could stay in safely for the night.

After a short while of panicked thought, I could see that Kate had an idea. Without warning, she grabbed my arm and ran towards the shelter. I tried asking her what on earth she was doing but she didn't listen, she was focused. She dragged me in through the front door as I tried to resist. A large part of the burning ceiling collapsed in right front of us as soon as we entered. We both shielded our faces and Kate bravely kicked the burning wood blocking the way, completely destroying it and clearing the way.

She turned to face me as she pulled me closer and simply shouted, "Mine! Now!" I timidly nodded as she shoved me towards the wooden panel blocking the entrance to the mine on the far side of the building. I lifted my shirt up to cover my mouth and nose as I began to take the complicated route around the sections of collapsed ceiling, some of which was still on fire, and parts of the burning floor to get there. The heat was intense, the smoke nearly completely covered my vision, and I could barely breathe. Though somehow, through my confused stumbling, I managed to run into the wooden panel. Literally.

Barely registering that I'd snapped one of the planks with my head, I stumbled back and hastily pushed it out of the way. It fell on the floor and blew the flames around it in all directions. I covered my face from the heat being projected towards me and looked around for Kate but I could hardly see a thing. I was terrified; I didn't know whether to go and look for her, to stay there and wait, or just leave her and assume she could get out fine.

I didn't have long to panic about this. Kate burst through the smoke, carrying a small wooden box and charging directly at me as she shouted, "Move! Down!"

Immediately, I turned and ran as fast as I could down the lengthy passage. Despite nearly killing myself several times by rushing down the dangerous steps, we both made it down safely.

Kate dropped her box on the floor and we both hunched over, coughing and spluttering for a good few minutes while trying to catch our breath. Kate, having been in the thick smoke for longer, was worse off than me so she eventually indicated for me to move the wooden panel leaning next to the entrance to block the passage, a similar looking panel to the one in the hut. Once I had done this, I leant up against the wall next to the entrance and slid down until I was sitting against it. The ache in my back reappeared as I took a few deep breaths to calm myself.

I felt very uneasy about being in this room considering what happened with Kate's diamonds the other day, but I pushed that thought to the back of my mind since we had no choice.

After both of us had been sitting on the floor for a while, occasionally coughing and trying to catch our breath, we tried to figure out what had actually happened. All we knew was that the lightning was centred on me. It was a single bolt of lightning and there wasn't a cloud in the sky at the time. There was no way it could have been a coincidence; this was something to do with me and the diamonds. I made damn sure that the box with them in was nowhere near me, I didn't particularly fancy going through that ordeal again.

We sat in silence, not knowing what to do with ourselves. I heard monsters on the other side of the iron door that led to Kate's mine. I mentioned my worries about that to her, at which she laughed and remarked that there was a reason she built the door. She assured me that we were safe.

Our food that night was pretty dismal. Thankfully Kate had the foresight to rescue the wooden box of pork from the burning shelter. Unfortunately, however, we had to eat it raw as there was no heat source at all underground. While this isn't particularly dangerous, unless you're really unlucky, it had a horrible taste and texture.

After some time of silence, I decided that now would be a good time to ask the question I'd been meaning to ask Kate ever since I met her. If she knew of any way at all off the island and back to civilisation. I felt like I knew the answer anyway; it wasn't like she was there out of choice.

She sat unmoving and dejectedly replied, "If there is, I haven't bloody found one. Trust me, I would like nothing more than to leave this sodding place behind and go back home." She let out a long sigh and started to idly fiddle with a small splinter of wood she'd found on the floor. "I haven't been able to explore the whole island, granted, but as far as I can see we're too far away from any other land to risk building some kind of raft. I wish I could just build a proper fucking boat." I could see the anger building up inside her.

She quickly stood up and threw the piece of wood onto the floor. While shouting, "Fucking bullshit!" as loud as possible, she kicked her workbench so hard that one of the legs snapped in half, causing it to completely collapse and knock all of the tool pieces that were on it onto the floor. She rested her forehead on the wall, closed her eyes, sighed loudly, and muttered, "I'm fucking sick of this place. Every time you think things are going well, it decides to just shit on you. Just when you get sorted for food, water and shelter, something happens and you have to begin all-fucking-over again."

I didn't know what to say at all. I knew that I probably wouldn't be successful in trying to cheer her up; she'd been on the island for a lot longer than me and I couldn't possibly comprehend what she was going through.

I tried to help as best as I could, but she eventually just said, "Sorry, you don't need to hear my problems. Everyone's got their own shit to deal with," as she returned and sat down next to me. I sombrely nodded in agreement as my thoughts turned, once again, towards Lucy. It seemed that Kate could somehow sense this when she then said, "Go on, tell me about your bird back in England. Lucy, was it?"

"Yeah. That's her." I started staring into space and thinking deeply about my next words. "I met her on my course at university; we were working together with a couple of other people for a group project in first year. Me and her ended up being the only two doing any work and we just kind of… Clicked. I don't really know how to describe it. I asked her if I could go with her to our course's first social," I chuckled a little to myself. "Hedging my bets, I guess. I figured if she wasn't actually into me then we could just have been going as friends and I could preserve my dignity. Turns out she _was_ into me though; I ended up going to her place that night."

"You fucked on the first date?" Kate sounded weirdly impressed.

"Nah. We actually stayed up for most of the night just talking. We had a bit of a snog but agreed that we should probably take things kind of slowly."

"Ah, so you fucked on the second date?"

Slightly taken aback by the forward question, I awkwardly cleared my throat and muttered, "Yeah."

"Hah. Students." She seemed very proud of herself. "How long have you been dating?"

"We will have been going out for two years in a few weeks. It is…" I hesitated for a moment, briefly remembering the situation I was in, "It _was_ the longest any relationship of mine has ever lasted."

"Do you reckon you love her, then?"

Quietly I muttered, "Yeah," trying to hold back tears.

"Aw, that's cute." She could see me tearing up and so put her arm around me and pulled me in close. "You're going to be fine, Mark. You'll see her again."

While I didn't quite believe her – I was pretty sure I was doomed to stay on this island forever – she still made me feel better. Despite how much I hated thinking about not being able to get back, I enjoyed talking about Lucy; it was like I was reliving the moments when we first met. The memories made me feel happy, if only for a brief moment.

We sat in silence for a while as I tried to calm myself down. Kate, still with her arm around me, was staring into space, deep in her own thoughts. It was weirdly nice; I'd had such little human contact since arriving on the island that anything felt like bliss to me. After a few minutes, Kate snapped out of her self-imposed trance to ask me, "What're your mates like then? The ones you were on your 'lads' holiday' with." She thought for a moment before saying, "By the way, I've never heard of a lads' holiday on a bloody yacht before."

I smirked and said, "Well, Tom was the one who dubbed it a lads' holiday. If he had a girlfriend, I can assure you that she and, by extension, Lucy would have been invited though."

"Sounds like an arsehole." Kate quickly interjected

"Nah…" I responded instantly before trailing off as I really thought about it. "Maybe a bit. But he's definitely my best friend, we'd do anything for each other." I continued on, talking at length about Tom. The more I talked about him the more I realised that we were completely different. He was a large, strong and loud man, especially where alcohol was concerned, whereas I was a more reserved, averagely built man who seemed to be able to take alcohol considerably better. Nonetheless, we were friends. Perhaps we were better friends because of our differences.

After explaining everything about Tom, I moved on. "Then there's David. He's wildly different. He's always been at the height of fashion and thinks he's infinitely cool. He's a good friend, though. Always there when I need him, despite his protests. Crazy good at history too."

"Oh? How good? He just got slightly more interesting."

"He's doing his degree in medieval and... the bit after that," I stalled as I tried to remember what David had called it. "I want to say early modern history." Kate nodded, presumably to inform me that I had indeed said a period of history that existed. "Give him any event in between the year 1000 and 1700 and he could probably date it exactly. I have no idea how he does it." I wasn't exaggerating. He had an incredible ability to remember a ludicrous amount of dates, people and events from those time periods. For all I knew he completely made up his facts, but he seemed genuine enough for me to believe him. Oddly enough, it was the one thing he had the ability to boast about but tended not to. He'd usually boast about things he'd made up, like his alleged successes with women and social media fame (which actually consisted of a combined total of just over 150 followers on Instagram and Twitter).

I finished up David's story and continued, "Lastly there's Sam. I've only known him for a couple of years but he's been a good friend at uni. He's quiet, much quieter than me, but get him to let go a bit and he's a lot of fun and can be incredibly quick-witted." Tom and David didn't take to Sam as quickly as I had. He might have seemed a bit too quiet when I first introduced him at the pub but, when he eventually photobombed his first David Instagram photo, he was officially part of the group.

We spent a long time that evening talking, not about anything quite as deep or depressing as our lives back home though. Eventually, we got onto talking about what we should do about the mess we found ourselves in. Obviously rebuilding the shelter was our number one priority, so we decided that one of us should clear out the destroyed shelter, salvaging what wood we could, and the other should work on collecting more wood. Kate knew how to build the shelter back up so she was going to teach me. It likely would take much longer than one day so we would have to retreat to the mine every night until the shelter was safe to sleep in. We had no idea what condition the shelter was actually in so we couldn't plan out how long it would take at all sadly; Kate estimated it would probably take about a week if things went relatively smoothly. So, knowing the island's ways, it would probably take about two weeks.

We eventually decided that we should get some sleep. Not having beds, we had to make do with the hard stone floor, it was extremely uncomfortable but we knew we had to sleep if we were going to make it through the next day.

Down in the mine, we had no concept of time. We couldn't see the sky at all so we had no idea when the sun rose. As a result, we woke up and left the mine much later than we had planned, not that we knew that at the time. We had both had terrible night's sleeps on the horribly uncomfortable stone floor.

I wearily pushed the wooden panel blocking the exit out of the way. From the bottom of the cave, we couldn't see the destruction of the shelter, but our hopes for a small amount of work weren't high when we saw multiple charred planks of wood sprawled across the top few steps. Kate told me she would go up first as we began our ascent to the surface. I'd left my sword in the inferno the night before, but Kate had hers drawn and ready. Ascending the length was a slow process since we were making sure to listen out for any movement and didn't want to make too much noise. As we approached the top, we could hear footsteps nearby. We couldn't work out what was causing them so we kept our guard up, despite it being more likely that they were just from a nosey animal than anything dangerous.

The sun was beaming through the now open roof, we realised at this point that we'd slept in far too late; it was about midday and we had an awful lot of work to be getting on with.

Once we had cautiously poked our heads through the cave exit, we could finally see the devastation for ourselves. The frame of the shelter remained, all of the walls were still nicely mapped out by the skeleton structure, but nearly everything else had collapsed or burned up. We reached the top to find there were no monsters in sight, but also no easy way through the ruin since wood of varying degrees of damage was strewn across the floor. The beds had been crushed by debris along with most of the tables and storage containers. Broken glass lay all over the floor where the windows had once been and the oven lay in pieces.

Kate lowered her sword and slowly shuffled through the wreckage, idly pushing charred planks of wood aside with the tip of the weapon. She looked completely dejected; this place had been her life for the past few years and now she was walking through its remains.

I held back for a moment, letting her have some time to herself through this. I thought that last thing she wanted was for me to clumsily try and make her feel better or make a stupid joke. I was watching Kate come to terms with the whole situation, mentally debating whether or not I should talk to her or not, for some time. It was the first time I'd seen her without a complete grasp on the situation; it was a strange sight.

A lump formed in my throat as guilt hit me. This wouldn't have happened if I hadn't entered into her life. It wasn't like I ever intended for this to happen, but I felt like she would have been better off if she had never met me. It seemed like I had only ever put her in danger since she found me.

Without warning, I was pulled backwards and completely lost my sight. I let out a muffled scream as I was violently pulled to the floor by the sack covering my head. My head smashed into the hard wooden floor and I felt the plank I hit break slightly as a wave of pain washed over me. The assailant held my arms behind my back and put all of their weight into stopping me from struggling as they shouted something someone else. Breathing became incredibly difficult with my covered face down on the floor. I could hear Kate and a few other voices shouting and frantically moving about. I struggled on the floor as much as I could as I desperately tried to free myself. I managed to lift my head up but it was immediately slammed into the floor again. I was in immense pain, the only thing fighting off unconsciousness at this point was the adrenaline coursing through my body.

All of a sudden the weight on my body was gone, whatever was holding me down had been thrown off. I carefully stood up amongst all of the chaos but was still unable to see. Before I could remove the cover, I was tackled to the ground again. They slammed my body into every protuding plank on the way. The adrenaline wasn't enough to keep me conscious anymore; I tried to fight it as best as I could but it wasn't enough, I was gone within seconds.


	7. Chapter Six: A Change of Scenery

Act Two: Sarthe

Chapter Six: A Change of Scenery

Late Evening, 24th June

I coughed and spluttered myself awake to find that I was sat on a cold stone floor up against a rough but certainly crafted vertical stone wall. My wrists were bound together above my head by a set of rough and heavy irons which were in turn chained to the wall that my back was resting on. My head ached and I could feel several cuts and bruises all over my body from the previous encounter. I reluctantly lifted my head and hauled my heavy eyelids apart to look at where I had ended up. As the muscles in my face contorted my skin, I felt the cracking and flaking of the dried blood that ran from my forehead, around one eye, and down my cheek.

Other than a set of iron bars with a locked gate in the centre, I was surrounded on almost all sides by walls made of the same dull, grey, and rough stone bricks that made up the floor. This area was not well maintained at all, there was a strong smell of damp and I could see the beginnings of mould forming around a small wet patch of floor near the entrance. It looked like some sort of a prison cell but I didn't think that could be possible, there were no other people on this island.

I had absolutely no idea what had happened and began to wonder if the monsters had started to take prisoners for whatever reason, but I dismissed the thought when I heard some distant voices outside the cell. I tried to move so that I could see down the narrow and dull stone corridor outside but the combination of my chains and aching joints meant that seeing much more was impossible. The two voices became louder as I heard footsteps approaching my cell. When they got close enough, I could just about hear their conversation. The deep and well-spoken voices seemed to be sceptical of what someone else had told them about someone being special in some way. I didn't have much of an idea of what they were talking about but they seemed to find the topic very amusing. Nevertheless, they had to go and interrogate a prisoner about it. The person who'd told them the story was clearly in a superior position of power to these people and so they had to go along with it.

Typical; the first other people we meet on this island and they arrest us. I wondered what had happened to Kate. Assuming she didn't go quietly and probably caused most of the chaos back at the hut, I wondered if they managed to get her too, or possibly worse.

The two talking men eventually came into view, only to increase the oddity of my situation immensely. They were two large and strong looking men who seemed to be wearing some sort of medieval guard's armour. It was one of the strangest things I had ever seen. They wore chainmail from the shoulders down that appeared to have been severely dulled from time and use, with some sort of marine blue fabric covering their upper bodies, emblazoned on which was a yellow design of a circular shield with a sword diagonally across it and a large elliptical-shaped pendant in the centre just in front of the sword. Despite the small amount of detail the design offered, it was clear that the pictured sword, shield, and pendant were supposed to be very ornate; they seemed very important to these people in some way.

The younger of the two guards was wearing a simple iron helmet with a nose guard down its centre whereas the more senior guard was holding his similar but slightly more armoured helmet by his side, revealing his short and cropped greying hair, as he strode with confidence towards my cell. The older guard seemed to be more highly ranked than his younger counterpart. His armour seemed to have much more intricate designs on it, plus he had a much better beard, clearly a sign of importance. He couldn't have been a great deal more important though, they seemed to have the same sword sheathed away and essentially the same armour despite the difference in decoration.

The older guard was carrying a small box that I recognised. _The diamonds! _The thought of them opening that box terrified me, my immediate reaction was to shuffle as far back against the wall as I could.

The older guard turned to face the younger and indicated in my direction, "He is the 'special' one then, is he?"

"Yes Sir, cell thirteen."

"This pathetic little baby?" The younger guard just nodded, "Fine. I will show him the diamonds and prove our _esteemed_ ruler wrong."

I recoiled at this notion. "Please, no! I can't do that again!" I shouted weakly, pleading desperately with them. The older guard just shrugged his shoulders and quickly opened the box right in my vision.

The same bright blue light flooded out and the agonising pain was back. I screamed out and tried to move away in any direction but was completely trapped. I couldn't see a thing and the pain was so intense I couldn't think about anything else. I remained like this for what felt like an age with a constant torrent of pain coursing through me.

In an instant, my sight was returned to me but I was not in the same place I was earlier. Still in constant agony, my joints completely seized from the unnatural pain but I fought to keep standing upright. I was overlooking a large medieval-style city with a big stone wall surrounding it and a huge castle within. It was all in ruin; plumes of smoke were billowing up from all over it and a great deal of it seemed to be on fire. I could hear screaming and shouting from its direction, the sounds were horrible.

I looked to the floor beneath me and saw a man on his back on the floor. His faded purple overcoat and discoloured white tunic were severely bloodstained and the fingers on his left hand looked broken. An ornamental sword had been plunged into his stomach and he lay completely lifeless on the ground.

Without being able to come up with comprehensible thoughts through the torture, I grasped the handle of the sword.

Similarly to before, the entire scene stopped. The fire over the buildings froze and the chaos paused. I was no longer in pain and was left staring at the destruction before me. As I breathed a sigh of relief, I let go of the sword. The weapon's pommel shone a bright blue and erupted in a burst of energy that launched me back.

Once again, my ears were harshly ringing and my body ached all over. My arms were free of their bindings and the black dust that had once been the irons and chains was partially hanging lazily in the air and partially spread across the floor. I lay in place, face down on the floor and unable to move or focus on anything. I felt absolutely drained of all my energy and was thankful that no one bothered me for quite some time.

After what could have been any amount of time between ten minutes and an hour, I heard the same two voices saying something down the corridor along with a booming, much deeper, and more powerful sounding voice. I couldn't make out what any one of them were saying but the two guards sounded incredibly panicked.

"This is the one is it?" The third voice said with a sense of calm that seemed unjust when compared to the other two. I still felt unable to move so I couldn't get a look at him, but he certainly sounded like he was a step above the other two guards. The younger guard shyly confirmed that they were at the correct cell and was then instructed to open the cell door.

"Begging your forgiveness, but I don't think that's wise." The older guard took a far more serious tone than earlier. "Who knows what he's capable of?"

There was a brief pause until the third man dismissively said, "Open the cell."

I heard the nervous shaking of keys in the lock before the creaking of the rusting iron gate swinging open. Footsteps slowly descended upon me. I didn't move; I couldn't find the energy to do anything.

The voice behind me waited for a moment before demanding, "Get him up." The two guards rushed over to me, their chainmail rattling irritatingly as they went. They moved either side of me, grabbed my upper arms, and lifted me up to me knees. I hung my head low, relying on them completely for support and staring down at the expensive and regal looking shoes on the feet of the man standing before me. "Look. At. Me." Despite his obvious frustration, I did not obey. I was simply drained and couldn't possibly lift my head no matter how much I wanted to.

One of the guard's knees launched at my stomach, colliding with its side seemingly as hard as he could. I instantly lurched forwards, trying to double over but unable to and nearly throwing up in the process. Heaving and coughing, I tried unsuccessfully to get my breath back. I stared at the floor, still supported by the two guards, and wheezed heavily.

The other guard grabbed the hair on the back of my head and wrenched it painfully back so my face was staring up at the man standing before me. Gazing up at his head, he looked incredibly poised. He was a little over middle aged, at least in his mid to late fifties, though with long white and wispy hair and a full white beard. He had a gold necklace draped around his neck, covered in expensive gems. His purple fur-lined cloak screamed wealth and his dominion over the guards showed he had some serious power.

"You can't possibly be one who can control the diamonds' power, can you?" He asked derisively, spitting a little with each hard syllable.

I coughed loudly in an unsuccessful attempt to clear my throat and replied, "I don't bloody feel like I am." The man in front of me seemed unimpressed. "But if you're asking me whether I can't look at them without the risk of being launched at a fucking wall, then I'm your man."

"Show your King some respect!" Barked one of the guards. I was wondering what on Earth I'd gotten myself into, the mention of a king made me feel like I'd been thrown back in time.

He looked at the senior of the two guards. "Unfortunately, you may be right. This…" He paused, trying to think of the right word. "This boy may be who we're looking for. Get him cleaned up and taken to my study."

Without another word, the King left me with the two guards who unceremoniously dropped me on the ground as soon as he'd left. The younger of the two briefly left us to fetch another set of iron shackles and, while the older guard held my arms together in front of me, he tentatively placed them around my wrists. Together, they led me out of the cell and to the end of the long corridor that was lined with mostly empty cells, each drearier and more depressing than the last. On the rare occasion that someone was in one of the ten or eleven cells we passed, they tended to be hunched in one corner desperately trying to sleep or just generally not paying any attention to the world they showed a clear resentment to. They all looked like they were in a terrible state; malnourished and sleep deprived, their clothes were in tatters and a couple of them had several small wounds that had become seriously infected. Kate wasn't in any of the cells we passed which I was both thankful for and worried about. Maybe she'd escaped, maybe she was just in one of the cells behind us that we didn't pass, or maybe something much worse had happened to her.

We arrived at the end to find a large wooden barrel, held together with two iron strips across its top and bottom. The older guard left me in the hands of the younger to lift the slim wooden top off it and reveal slightly dirty water filled to the brim of the barrel. I was positioned so that I was kneeling in front of it, my face just above the top of the barrel and my head held up by the hair on the back of my head. The older guard scooped some of the cold water with his hands and threw some of it into my face. I flinched backwards and hit my head on the armour of the younger guard as the brown-tinged water ran down my face and body, mixing with the dirt and blood covering me and eventually pooling into a disgusting mixture on the floor. This was repeated several times over, each leaving me feeling dirtier than the last despite the guards' intentions.

Dripping with filthy water, a cover was roughly forced over my head to restrict my vision and I was forcefully escorted through the building. Throughout the trip, I could hear the distant murmurs of curious onlookers judging and discussing my presence and appearance. We briefly stopped as the younger guard, under the instruction of the senior guard, opened a door in front of us. I heard him rush back behind me as they shoved me into the room, nearly knocking me over completely.

There was a brief pause of silence that was broken by the King as his booming voice travelled across the room to say, "When I said get him cleaned up." He paused and sighed, sounding very irritated. "I meant _actually_ clean him. I did not mean splash some dirty water on his face and cart him around like he was a common criminal." His voice raised as his displeasure could be heard even in the previous room. "And get that damned sack off his head!"

The cover was quickly whipped off my head, revealing the candle-lit room before me. The large windows at the opposite end of the averagely sized room extended all of the way up to the tall ceiling, providing a clear view of the bright stars in the expansive night sky. The view was somewhat obscured by the surprising amount of light being supplied by the large candles dotted all over the room. The walls on either side were lined with shelves full of books. Some sections contained brand-new books that were all neatly aligned either by the ends of the shelves or by bespoke bookends, but others were full of misshapen and decaying books that were not standing the test of time particularly well. A large wooden desk took centre stage on top of a square red rug which in turn was on top of a dark wooden floor. The King stood over the desk. He appeared to have been studying an old and decrepit book that was placed open on the desk just in front of him.

"Forgive me, your Majesty," The more senior guard began apologetically. "Should we get him cleaned and return with him later?"

"No, never mind. You have already treated him badly enough as it is. I am certain you would only make it worse." The frustrated monarch walked around the table and up to me, his similar height to my own not aiding his attempts to be intimidating. "Young man, what do you know of diamonds? Ordinary diamonds."

Slightly perplexed, I began to try and remember what I had learned in my GCSEs, "Something to do with carbon, right? Coal but… stronger."

"Well," He began, seeming somewhat confused, "I am not quite sure of this 'carbon' nonsense." He thought for a moment. "In any case, what about the 'Diamonds of Perdition'?

"Diamonds of…" I paused for a moment. This sounded like something out of a bad fantasy story. "… Perdition? Isn't perdition some kind of, like, damnation?"

"Indeed. They're similar to ordinary, or your 'carbon' diamonds, but they're formed in the Nether." He tried to make that sound dramatic, but the 'Nether' just sounded like a PG version of Hell to me. "Those that we showed you earlier are some of those very diamonds."

He spent the next half hour going over these diamonds in as much excruciating detail as he could. They were scattered across the island when humans settled on it, but no one knew how they got there. The effects had been documented, but very few facts had been revealed. The Hell origin seemed to come from speculation more than anything.

The King seemed oddly certain that they were a gift, or possibly a test, from God. I was almost entirely sure that there's nothing like that in the bible, so it seemed like a strange addition to their presumably Christian faith to me. In any case, I asked no questions so that I could leave as quickly as possible.

Whatever had happened, I was told that three artefacts were found on the island as well as some of the diamonds, though clearly not all of them. Each artefact could be used in conjunction with the diamonds to give the users immense power. No one knew who made them or why, but I was told that those with them would basically be unstoppable. There was a sword, imbued with the power of one of the harshest natural phenomena, lightning. There was also a shield that allowed the user to control a large number of things, both sentient and non-sentient. This was apparently the most difficult one to learn to use. The third was an amulet, the power of which had been lost to time along with the amulet itself. The book on the desk, from which the man was getting all of this information, claimed that a special few could control the diamonds and one specific artefact and even fewer could control all three of them. The King seemed to think that I could control at least one of the artefacts.

"The diamonds have given you visions have they not?" I quickly nodded, starting to buy into this nonsense, "Which artefact have you seen in those?"

I paused for a short while. _How did he know that I'd seen them?_ "All three," I hesitantly replied. "Although one was just in a dream."

"A dream you had after you first saw a diamond?" I nodded in agreement again. "I'm not sure I believe this but, according to our knowledge, you may be able to control all three." He immediately seemed humbled by me and in awe of this, despite never seeing any evidence for himself so far. "You should go to sleep. I have a lot of work to do." He turned away from me and moved towards his book. "My men will prepare a chamber in the castle for you." The revelation that I was in a castle only hit me after the conversation had finished.

The guards started to manoeuvre me towards the door but I struggled free and yelled out, "Wait!" at the King, who quickly turned around with an alarmed expression across his face. "I couldn't give a shit about all of this bollocks right now. Is Kate alright? Let me see Kate."

"Kate?" He thought for a moment. "Ah. The woman you were with?" Pausing briefly to try to form his answer delicately. "That is not possible. She is not to be trusted."

"Not to be trusted? Why is she so much less trustworthy than me?" I was starting to get irritated.

"She badly injured two of my men!" He snapped back at me

"Your men attacked us! What did you expect her to do?!" The King opened his mouth to say something but I cut him off before he started, "You've caused your own bloody distrust! You attacked us, you injured us, you locked us up in damp, disgusting cells and treated us like we're the fucking scum of the Earth and you still maintain that you can't grant us one little bit of luxury?! I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for her! Not to mention how you even found us; have you been following us? Following her the entire time she's been here?!"

"Of course not!" The King was quick to interrupt, "We followed the obvious lightning that set your hut on fire."

"You didn't have to fucking attack us!" I started to get lost in my rant, completely forgetting that I wasn't in a position of power at all. "I'm not doing anything you want from me until you let her out. You can do what you want, but I'm not going to fucking help you with your magic diamond sword bollocks until she's treated like a human being. Let her out. You wankers owe us that much."

He was taken aback by the whole outburst, as was I to be honest. He thought hard for a while as the guards opened the door and began to escort me out of the room. I resisted a small amount, but not nearly enough to slow them a considerable amount.

"Ok," The King said, dejected. The guards stopped and looked back at the King in disbelief. "I'm not going to lie to you, boy. We're going to be asking a lot of you over the coming days. It would be unjust to deny you your wish. You will see her before the night is over. You have my word. However, if she causes any trouble, she _will_ be going back in her cell."

I calmed down and let out a quiet and exasperated, "Thank you," as the guards escorted me out of the room. I couldn't think of anything else to say at that point, I'd never had an outburst like that before so I was still trying to piece together what had just happened. I was just happy it all seemed to go relatively well, much better than it probably should have. I considered fighting against his consistent referring to me as a boy but decided that it was better to pick my battles carefully.

The route to my chamber wasn't particularly interesting. Narrow stone corridors in an arch shape with only the tiniest slit windows to the darkened outside world. A red carpet with gold trimmings on its edges perfectly ran down the centre of each one and candles provided light from their holds on both walls. Along the way the guards barked some orders at a passing servant to prepare my chamber, making them rush on ahead to get started. I would have been happy with a warm room and some straw to lie on at this point, I didn't care if they adequately prepared the room or not.

We passed all sorts of people going about their business. Some were servants rushing around, trying to keep the castle perfect, others were pairs of guards either marching the halls or standing to attention, all using similar equipment to those escorting me. All of the people we passed stared at me at length. I was filthy, blood-stained, in strange clothes and being pushed along by irritated looking guards. I was an odd sight.

When we reached the room, the servants were still working so we had to wait outside in silence. I asked the guards if they would undo the shackles around my wrists but they wouldn't allow it until I was in the room, yet it would allegedly have been rude to enter the room before they had finished. Ridiculous customs for someone in my situation. I just wanted some sleep.

After about ten minutes, the servants left, my shackles were released, and I was shoved into the room. The guards slammed the door behind me after instructing me that I wasn't to leave the room under any circumstances until the King fetched me in the morning. Not even to go to the toilet, I had a 'spacious' chamber pot for that.

Lack of hygiene aside, it was a grand room. A huge bed up against the wall drew the focus. While the feather mattress wasn't huge, a small double at best, the grand wooden headboard gave it a huge sense of presence. It stretched way up to the ten-foot-high ceiling and was thick enough to look load-bearing. The intricate carvings of leaves and berries all over it were impressive, to say the least.

A large fireplace was embedded in the wall near the bed with a roaring fire going. At that moment I took everything back I'd thought about the necessity of the servants, I was in heaven. Comfortable cushioned seats and chairs dotted the edges of the moderately sized room and a wooden screen sat in the corner, carved in a similar manner to the bed's headboard. Everything was exquisite.

While the room was almost perfect, I couldn't say that I was a fan of the clothes they had laid out. There were two piles of clothes laid side by side on the bed before me. I assumed one set was for me as it looked like the kind of dress-wear I expected medieval men to wear with my very limited knowledge of the time. There was a loose-fitting white linen shirt designed to go underneath a relatively short blue woollen tunic. Along with these was a pair of also loose-fitting trousers with a big leather belt and leather shoes, painted black, at the foot of the bed. The other pile of clothes looked more typically medieval-feminine. There was a tight-fitting long blue dress that looked like it was to be laced up at the top, with a long cloth overcoat (which I later found out was called a 'surcoat') and a corset to go underneath. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out who the second set of clothes were for – not exactly thinking straight after the day's events – before simply collapsing into one of the comfortable chairs when I decided that I didn't care enough to dwell on it further.

A short while later, I realised I had dozed off in the chair when I was woken up by some muffled talking behind the door. It sounded like the same two guards again and a female voice but I couldn't make out much more of that. I quietly got up and moved towards the door, focusing intently on listening to the conversation, though with little success. As I neared the door, it suddenly swung open taking me completely by surprise as I jumped back. The guards pushed someone through the door and slammed it shut again.

"Kate!" I gleefully shouted at the stumbling woman before me.

"Mark?" She quickly regained her balance and looked up at me. "Mark!" We quickly moved towards each other, stretched out our arms and hugged. "Fuck me it's good to see a friendly face." We retracted and stepped back a bit, "Even if it is yours." She briefly smirked. "Are you alright? What the hell is going on?"

"I'll be honest, everything's been pretty much explained to me and I still have a very loose grasp on the situation."

"Sounds heavy. Sounds like a sit-down conversation to me." I agreed and we moved over to where our clothes had been laid out on the bed. "What the fuck are these? Are we supposed to wear these?" She picked up her surcoat and harshly judged it.

"I think so. They look bloody horrible, right?"

"I'm just going to wash my stuff and wear that. Their poncy crap can bugger off." We dumped our two piles of clothes on the floor and sat on the bed. I explained everything I knew at that point, all about what the King said about my potential abilities and what the diamonds could supposedly do. I was still quite on the fence about whether or not I believed him or not.

"Fucking what?" Kate responded to my story, certainly feeling like it was nonsense.

"Pretty crazy, right?"

"Not just crazy. Bat-shit insane. You don't believe this do you, Mark?"

"You haven't been through what I have with the Diamonds, Kate. I'm not saying I unconditionally believe it but there's a definite chance."

Kate thought for a moment. She couldn't think of much to say to that before eventually replying with, "Just be careful Mark. I may not know what you've been through, but you don't know what I've been through with these guys either."

I didn't understand what she meant by that. I spent a little while trying to figure it out in my head before plainly asking, "What _have_ you been through?"

"Shall I start from the beginning?" I was about to answer yes but she wasn't going to wait for an answer anyway. "When we were attacked, they held you down as they tried to get me too. I ended up trying to fight off three of the bastards; I think I might have kicked one of them into the guy holding you down at one point." That explained why I was suddenly freed for about half a second during the fight. "When I realised there wasn't much of a way out of the situation, I tried to reason with them. They pretended like they were going to go along with it and be peaceful right up until I put my sword on the ground." She paused to show cuts and bruises across her arms and legs. She began to speak again as she pulled back her hair to show her blood-encrusted scalp. "They just beat the shit out of me until I couldn't put up a fight so that they could take us here. So much for fucking honour and chivalry."

I was at a loss for words. I felt like it was all my fault. She was living a relatively peaceful life until I entered it. This was the first time I'd seen her not be able to handle a situation and it was slightly distressing. "Jesus, Kate. I had no idea. I'm so sorry."

"Don't be, it's not your fault. Just be wary of them, ok?"

I nodded in agreement before asking, "Are you alright? Is it painful?"

"I'll be fine," She quickly replied, likely not wanting to admit the pain and cause a fuss over it. "Let's just get some sleep."

I agreed and we decided to have a brief (and in Kate's case, careful) wash in the large trough of water provided to us for this purpose. We simply splashed water over our faces to wash out the most gregarious of blemishes, we were past the point of caring too much about proper hygiene. The once-clean water slowly turned into a disgusting brown-red mess in the trough.

Once we were done, Kate moved to get ready for sleep before a thought dawned on me,

"Wait. You're not sleeping here, are you?" I asked her, feeling slightly worried.

"Yeah, where are you sleeping?"

"… Here."

"Oh." Kate thought for a moment, not quite understanding my concern. "I guess that makes sense."

I tried to think of a solution to this. I didn't fancy sleeping in the same bed, I wanted a full bed to myself after everything that had happened. "Shall I sleep on one of the chairs? Or we could top and tail?" I asked, somewhat hoping she would offer to sleep on a chair instead.

"What? Don't be silly." She said condescendingly as she began to undress. I averted my gaze as she said, "Just bloody get in."

Reluctantly, I agreed and moved over to the other side of the bed and did the same, although I did keep my underwear on; I still had some class. We both climbed under the thick blanket, me far more tentatively than Kate; she just flat-out didn't care about being naked, which years of living alone would do to anyone. "Top and tail..." She mocked. "If I was a bloke you wouldn't go top and tail, would you? No, you wouldn't give a shit about going on the same side."

I quietly responded, "We'd probably top and tail."

"What? Why?"

"I don't really know. What if we were to roll over… Unfortunately?"

"Then _obviously_ we fuck," she said sarcastically. "All you guys bloody think about is sex." We lay in silence for a moment as I tried to come up with excuses for my line of thinking. Eventually, Kate just said, "Good night. I'll try not to accidentally bugger you in the night."


	8. Chapter Seven: Power

Chapter Seven: Power

Early Morning, 25th June

"Mark!" Lucy screamed out in terror. "Help me! Please!" She called out to me over and over again, unrelenting in her dread. At the end of an unnatural darkened corridor, she curled up on my university sofa and buried her face in her arms. The storm around her drew closer; the rain washed across the room, the wind whistled all around, and the cracks of thunder and lightning became faster and more aggressive.

I pushed myself through the corridor towards her with all of my energy but nothing seemed to happen. The horrible scene before me got no closer, I couldn't do anything. My steps became heavier and heavier as the living room in front of me started to fall apart around Lucy. I was completely powerless, nothing I did seemed to change anything. I was being forced to stop moving, trying to fight it only resulted in the force becoming stronger as my movement slowed further. The weight being put on me eventually became too much as I collapsed onto the floor and tried to crawl to Lucy. Bright flashes of lightning illuminated the room around Lucy, but my corridor remained pitch black, I couldn't even see the floor I was crawling on. The only thing keeping me going was Lucy but it was hopeless. I was crawling against unnatural forces for what felt like an eternity, but I eventually had to give up. My head fell to the floor as I heard Lucy continue to shout out at me as if I'd given up on her. I tried to call out to her but no sound escaped my mouth. I was trapped. Nothing I did had any effect on anything.

I looked at my hands and found a diamond in one of them, one of the special ones. I could see it. I could actually see it. It was an extremely bright blue and perfectly cut. I could feel its power as it glowed, illuminating my body around it but somehow not the floor. It was beautiful.

The world around me seemed to slow down as I could feel the diamond's power grow. It glowed brighter and brighter as I felt like I was completely losing what little control I had over everything. I tried to push the diamond away from me, but it wouldn't leave my hand. I couldn't even move away from it; it was just being forced upon me. I had absolutely no choice in the matter. Its power grew and grew until it finally reached its peak, it exuded an almost blinding light for a few seconds before it erupted, sending lightning all around me and striking straight through Lucy.

I shouted "No!" at the top of my voice as I immediately sat up and forced open my eyes. I was sweating all over and breathing incredibly heavily.

Kate shot up next to me as she shouted "What?! What's going on?!" I said nothing, I just looked around the room, trying to catch my breath. I was back in the bedroom of the castle. Nothing had changed. I checked my hands; no diamonds in sight. "Mark? Are you ok?"

Again, I didn't respond. I just sat still, thinking about everything. I was silent for some time, with an increasingly worried Kate staring at me, before I finally said, "I can't deal with this."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't want any of this. I can't deal with this. I'm fucking done."

She seemed slightly lost for words for a couple of seconds. "You mean the diamond thing?"

"I mean everything!" I quickly cut her off and turned my head to face her. Staring straight into her eyes, I said, "The diamonds, the dreams, the fucking medieval, fantasy bollocks we're in now. What the fuck am I doing? I don't want this power. I don't want this responsibility. Who knows what this shit is capable of? I don't want to hurt anyone because some twat from the past wants me to meddle with shit that shouldn't be meddled with!"

Kate was clearly taken aback. I hadn't snapped at her like that before, she clearly wasn't used to it. Tentatively, she replied, "What makes you think you're going to hurt people?"

I exhaled and indicated to myself. "Kate. Look at me. I'm a posh little twenty-year-old Maths student from London. How the hell am I meant to be able to control these mystical fucking forces that this King has just dropped on me?"

"Well…" Kate was clearly lost for words, "How do we know this stuff is real anyway? It all sounds like rubbish to me."

"I know it's real. It's too fucking real. And I know that these diamonds aren't meant to be meddled with. I don't care what some book says about me. If I use this stuff, then everything is going to go to shit. Even more so than it already has."

Kate thought for a moment, she really didn't know what to say. It's not the kind of topic most people end up talking about in their lives. "This is hard, I understand that, but I don't think these guys are just going to let you not go through with this, unfortunately." She could see this wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear so she continued on, making up her words on the spot, "This book is supposed to know everything about this bollocks, right? If it says that you'll be fine with controlling the diamonds, then I'm sure you will be given time."

I calmed down a bit and thought for a moment. Looking away from her I said, "I don't know. I just don't think I can deal with this." Kate had nothing else she could say. We sat in silence for a few moments before I let out an exasperated chuckle. She gave a small, uplifted smile and confusedly asked what I was laughing at. Mid-laugh I just replied, "That last bit you said; that was complete bullshit, wasn't it?"

Kate laughed with me, "Well it's pretty tough to be reassuring about something that you don't actually believe in." We sat in the bed giggling for a short while before Kate put her hand on my shoulder and said, "But seriously, everything will be fine with this. If it's not true you have nothing to worry about and, if it is true, then this King bloke seems to know what to do with it all." She could see that I was feeling somehow reassured from that and so said with a smirk, "And either way, I'll be with you to save your arse from certain death as usual."

I smiled back at her, "My arse appreciates that."

We carried on talking for a few hours about the whole situation, we were mostly just complaining about how ridiculous it all was. It helped to talk to someone normal, not someone from the land that time forgot. It seemed crazy that this one place was stuck in this time period. We even entertained the idea that we may have been the tourists in their time rather than us still being in the 21st century but we couldn't possibly think how that could have happened. Everything was just so abstract, it was incredibly hard to comprehend. Kate seemed to have more trouble with figuring out how she missed this place when living on the island, remarking that she must not have explored nearly as much as she thought she had.

An hour or two passed and we heard the fumbling of keys in our door. It swung open and the King strode in with purpose, shortly followed by two guards. These guards seemed different to the previous ones, possibly higher ranks than the guards we had met the day before. They had stronger looking armour and round iron helmets. Their colours indicated a higher rank too, their colour scheme of a darker blue with gold trimmings (with the same insignia as the other guards) was incredibly distinctive, along with their tall halberds and perfect posture. I figured that they must have been the King's closest guards or something similarly high ranking. They stood either side of the King, completely stone-faced as he stood towards the entrance of the room. He looked over to us but immediately turned away, covering his eyes as he went, "Good heavens! I apologise milady. I didn't expect you to be so… Unclothed." The guards remained unmoved but they didn't look either, trying to keep professional. I'd completely forgotten about Kate being naked, I'd just gotten used to it.

"Don't worry about it." Kate casually replied, not bothering to cover up.

He briefly turned back only to immediately turn away again. "Good God! Cover yourself, woman!"

"What, why?" I could hear Kate starting to get agitated.

"A lady should never be so… Forthcoming with her appearance."

"And I suppose it's fine for a bloke, is it?"

I quickly interrupted, "Kate, calm down. Just do as he says." I remembered what the King had said about what would happen if she caused trouble. She'd definitely lost some social graces from being alone for so long so it seemed up to me to keep her out of trouble.

She shot me an angry glare but I met it with a deeply serious one. Fortunately, she wasn't so stubborn that she couldn't see that I meant what I said. She could see that I wouldn't have asked what I did if I didn't have a good reason behind it. She sighed and frustratedly said, "Fine," as she pulled her side of the blanket up and over her.

"Good," the King said, finally returning his view towards us. "Maybe your lady should show a little more decorum in the future." I could see Kate seething in my periphery but unfortunately couldn't do anything about it. "Now get dressed, we have a busy day in front of us." Without another word, he ushered his guards to follow him and left the room. He wasn't exactly one for talking. We still didn't even know his name.

"I want to hit him. I want to hit him in his condescending little face," said a furious Kate once the door had slammed shut. "Hmph. 'Your lady.' He can fuck right off."

"I know, I'm sorry I had to intervene, but he said that he'd chuck you back in your cell if you caused trouble." She at least showed some understanding to me. "I'm afraid you may have to conform to the attitudes here. At least for a while."

"I get it, I know. It's a different bloody world here. I'm just going to have to get used to the not-so-casual sexism." She let out a long sigh. "Let's get dressed then shall we? Wouldn't want to keep his twatesty waiting."

We got dressed in the complicated and uncomfortable clothes they had laid out for us, both silently cursing our lack of clean, sensible clothing. It took us nearly half an hour to get ourselves sorted. My clothes, while not particularly complicated overall, had a lot of pieces to it and I had trouble trying to figure whether my shirt and tunic were inside-out or not. Kate's dress probably required a team of people to put on properly but, between us, we just about managed to get it on her. The lacing made it so tight on her that we thought at the time that they'd got the measurements wrong, but we saw other women around later with similarly sized dresses. It probably would have taken even longer if we'd have bothered to use the corset. Kate understandably felt that that was a bit too far.

Once we'd got the dress on her, I stepped back, smirked and said to Kate, "Well, don't you look very lady-like."

She just glared at me, completely unamused. "Let's just fucking get on with this."

We exited the room to be greeted by two guards, similarly ranked to the those that were with the King earlier. They sternly ordered us to follow them and we obeyed. We weren't ones to argue against large men with large halberds. Silently they led us through the castle halls, all decorated with the same red carpet with gold trim that lined the floors of the previous corridors. The arrowslits on the one side leading to the outside world provided just enough light to allow the candles that lined the walls on both sides to remain unlit. It seemed that the halls were just as busy in the day as the night before, we passed similar amounts of servants and guards all seemingly doing the same jobs as before, although with distinctly less judging as Kate and I now finally looked the part.

Moving off the repeating hallways, we turned into an unassuming corridor. No red carpets or decoration of any kind here, simply a square corridor made of dull, grey stone. We reached a huge set of similarly decorated spiral stairs and proceeded to descend into the depths of the castle until we reached a final long and equally dull corridor, dimly lit by a few candles on one wall. At the end was a strong but small wooden door with two huge iron bars across it to lock it in place. Above and either side of the door were two lit torches providing the main sources of light to the corridor as it was completely cut off from the sun. In front of the door stood the King, looking decidedly stressed, with the same two guards he was with when he came to greet us that morning.

"Good, you're here. Finally." He said, clearly not understanding the trials and tribulations of a medieval woman's dress. We walked up to him but were stopped by the guards when we were a few paces before him. He looked over to me, "I see you've finally shown your woman how to behave." I saw Kate curl her fingers into a fist and could feel her anger growing.

"Her name's Kate," I said, trying to get across the fact that she didn't belong to me without actually rocking the boat.

"I'm glad she's covered herself up at last." He seemed to be trying to anger Kate on purpose, perhaps to make her cause a scene so that he would have an excuse to lock her away. He clearly didn't like her very much. "Before we begin, I don't think we've actually been introduced during this whole dreadful business." He continued, suddenly sounding a fair bit cheerier. "I am King Harold II of House Plantagenet. I know you're a special one, but I'm yet to know your name." _Plantagenet_. I knew that name. I wished I'd paid more attention to David when he went on about history at great length.

"I'm Mark. Mark Harding, sir."

One of the guards hit my shoulder and sternly said, "You shall refer to your King as 'your majesty' and nothing else." I quickly apologised and the King continued.

"Good. Now, good woman, I know that you are Kate," He directed his attention to her, "But what is your full name, madam?"

Kate quickly and sullenly said, "Kate Thompson." She paused for a moment before condescendingly saying, "Your Majesty."

I decided to try and sound slightly posh and from the time, "Begging your pardon, your Majesty, but I think I know your house name, Plantagenet. Are you from England?"

"Very astute, Harding. My family traces its origins back to England and France where we fought for the crown of England nearly 900 years ago. I may tell you more about that later, however. We have more important things to discuss." At least that ruled out the possibility of us being time travellers, no matter how cool that would have actually been. The King reached into his clothing and pulled out a key attached to a necklace, one he clearly wanted to keep an eye on at all times. He pushed it into the lock on the door which unlocked the two iron bars above the handle. Stepping back, the King gave a knowing nod to the guard closest to him who slid the bars back and pulled the door open towards us. All it revealed was a darkened stairwell made from the same stone as the corridor. The King exchanged some quiet words with his four guards, took one of the torches from the wall, then gestured for us to follow him into the stairwell. I walked past the guards at the door but they stopped Kate.

"Sorry, madam. This is no place for a woman," one guard said. I looked back at her, she looked furious.

"You fucking what?" She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists, which would have looked more intimidating if she wasn't in her little dress.

"You'll have to stay here while his majesty and Master Harding go in," the guard continued, ignoring her comment as I was ushered in.

Behind us and as loud as she could, Kate shouted, "Fucking hell!"

I followed King Harold, pretending to ignore Kate's outburst but hoping she hadn't got herself into trouble. He lit a few of torches on the wall, which due to the narrow nature of the stairwell meant they were worryingly close to burning me every time I passed one. They were few and far between, however, so I mostly had to rely on Harold's own torchlight to guide me down the long but shallow staircase.

Eventually, the stairwell opened up to an averagely sized circular room. The King spent a little time lighting a small pyre in the centre of the room which, once it got going, lit most of the room up in its flickering glow. It revealed a stone brick floor arranged in circles around the fire with three alcoves in front of me, each with their own plinths in the centre of them. The alcoves had arches of stones around their edges, each with a larger keystone at the top and they descended back in a smooth, spherical shape. Both the central and right-hand plinths were empty but the plinth to the left contained an ornamental sword, standing proud like the sword in the stone.

The long straight blade of the sword was simple but elegant. Its double edge narrowed to a definite and deadly point and seemed designed to be as balanced as possible. The hilt, on the other hand, seemed relatively overdesigned. The circular pommel had a soft blue glow in its centre and was otherwise adorned with modest but interesting detail, the leather around the grip was perfectly spun and the slight zigzag of the blade-angled crossguard was perfectly formed. Electricity, or more appropriately, lightning, was occasionally jolting around the blade, showing its raw power. Behind the blade but still on the plinth was its scabbard. A black leather and gold-adorned sheath purpose-made for the sword. Its attached leather belt was gracefully draped down either side of it.

I recognised the sword. It took me a while to place exactly where but the glowing pommel gave it away. It was the sword from one of my visions. The sword responsible for killing whoever that man was.

"What the fuck?" I said, completely abandoning any semblance of formality with the King.

"Yes," he began, likely not understanding what I was saying but getting the gist from my tone, "Impressive, isn't it?"

"What is all of this?"

"Go and look for yourself."

I did as I was told and cautiously moved towards the sword. As I approached, I noticed the keystone above had an engraving on it. It read:

_The Sword of Light_

_May it strike down our foes_

I moved over to the centre alcove, the inscription above read:

_The Shield of Control_

_May it change the will of those who stand against us_

The right alcove's inscription read:

_The Amulet of Sight_

_May it guide us to a better future_

The sword, the shield, and the amulet. The three artefacts I'd seen in my visions. The three parts to the design on all of the guard's armour. They were all too real as it turned out, although two of them were missing from their homes.

"These…" I hesitantly began as I stepped back from the plinths, "These are for the three things. You built this for the three artefacts?"

"Our ancestors did. When these were found, they decided that we required a safe place to store them." He began to look at me expectantly, "Take the sword, Harding."

I looked over at the sword, lightning still firing out all over it. "You're joking." In my mind, there was no way it would be safe to touch.

"No, Harding." He suddenly became very intense. "You must prove you are special. If you are who I think you are, you will be fine."

"And what if I'm not who you think I am?"

He thought for a moment, "Do not worry. You will be ok," he said unconvincingly. "Take the sword."

I stared at the sword, its imposing figure pushing me away from it. I did not want to do this. I was always told to be respectful of electricity, although school didn't have the foresight to teach us about ancient magical artefacts. Being ushered forwards by the King standing behind me, I made tentative steps towards the sword, its power seeming more terrifying with every step I took. I stepped directly in front of it and glanced over its intricate carvings along the crossguard and pommel; it was exquisitely crafted to such an insane level. The detailing was incredible.

"What_ actually_ happens if I grab it and I'm just a normal schmuck?" I asked the King, not entirely expecting a straight answer. I didn't keep my eye off the sword though; I wasn't letting it out of my sight.

It took him far too long to come up with a response, "Nothing. You simply will not be able to pick it up."

I didn't believe him, but the four guards outside meant that I wasn't in much of a position to argue. I reached for the chest-height handle and hovered over it for a moment. My own mortality was staring me in the face, a feeling I was getting quite familiar with by now. This was different in one very important way though; I'd never been the one to decide when I was going to potentially die. All of my regrets and things I had yet to do in my life came rushing through my mind. I thought about how much I regretted going off on holiday, how much I regretted not revising for my GCSE English exam and then, knowing full well they'd find out anyway, lying to my parents about getting an A on it, even how much I regretted stealing a pound from my mum's purse to buy some sweets when I was nine. I was still yet to go to Rome like I'd always wanted, I hadn't finished my degree yet – I didn't even know if I'd passed second year by this point – and at the very least I wanted to see Lucy and my family one last time. All of these thoughts and more went through me as I held my hand over the sword, violently shaking from the nerves. I was standing there for what felt like an eternity, but in reality was probably just a minute or two, before I gave up on stalling.

I muttered "Christ alive" under my breath, closed my eyes and grasped the handle as hard as I could while shouting in fear. Nothing happened. I stood there in silence for a while, confused and breathing heavily. Still holding onto the handle, I inched open my eyes and found that I was no longer in the chamber. I was standing in the middle of a large forest, the dim light of the sunset just about illuminating the ground through the large trees. I was still holding the sword in place but the plinth had disappeared. I lowered the sword down to my side, noticing that it was incredibly light for its size. The world seemed calm; the air was still and silent, there was no movement about me whatsoever.

I looked behind me to find a less-than-calm scene. Kate, the King, two of his guards, David, and I were all frozen in place while fighting off several monsters with another of the King's guards dead on the floor. I could simply walk between all of the motionless bodies, during which I managed to see how terrible my appearance had gotten throughout all of this. I was covered in cuts and bruises, and my (or in fact, David's) clothes were ripped in several places and incredibly dirty.

I seemed scared of something. I looked over to see just what was terrifying my frozen form and saw a figure. His long, dark hair seemed to be blowing in the wind and the expression over his middle-aged face showed both anger and joy as he charged towards me. His clothes looked like they were once incredibly expensive, but time had taken its toll and the purple colours of the overcoat and trousers had faded, every garment having a few cuts around it. My hand was moving to pull the fancy sword out of its scabbard but, judging by my facial expression, I wasn't confident that it would help.

I looked over to the King. He was falling backwards and holding his hand over one of his eyes with the end of an arrow sticking through the gap in his fingers. Blood was frozen in place as it erupted from his wound and covered his hand. His bloodstained iron sword was falling out of his hands as he fell. It was a horrible sight that I had to look away from. His guards were gathered around him, trying to protect him from harm but not holding up so well themselves

Kate, in her own practical leather outfit rather than the clothes supplied by our current hosts, initially seemed like her immobile form was on top of things, but I could see fear entering her eyes as she was glancing over at the mysterious figure in front of me while she was fighting off a zombie and trying to protect a petrified but still standing David. I remembered how much I missed my friends. This was both a good and bad thing to witness; on the one hand, it looked like me and David would be reunited. On the other, the circumstances looked particularly bleak. None of the previous visions had come true yet so I chose to push the thought to the back of my mind. I got the feeling that these ancient artefacts were just playing tricks on me.

The whole scene was horrible. I didn't know whether it was a vision of the future or just a sick game the sword was somehow playing on me, but I couldn't stand it. I dropped the sword and just let it fall to the soft ground. It hit the grassy floor with a surprising _clang_ of metal hitting stone and the whole scene suddenly disappeared, revealing the chamber I was in previously. I was staring silently at the empty plinth, the sword still at my feet, devoid of the electricity once flowing through it.

The King shouted out to me, "Harding! Can you hear me?!" I quickly spun my head around to look at him, I found he was joined by one of his guards and looking concerned. He breathed a sigh of relief, "Oh thank you. Thank the Lord. I thought your mind was gone." I said nothing, but he continued to explain his side of the events anyway. When I grabbed the sword, I did exactly what I had done in my vision, but in real life. He saw me wander around, stare deeply into nothing and nearly collide with several walls. He got worried, so he called back for one of his guards to join him in case things turned sour. As magic-led events had gone for me in the past, I thought that this one was rather tame. No less harrowing for its calm nature, however.

I stared at him for a moment, bemused by the whole affair. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced. Eventually, I simply said, "Bloody Nora," and then told him about my vision. I neglected to tell him about his role in it, I thought that him and his guard might have taken it as some sort of threat and dealt with me before the threat could manifest itself. He thought about what I had said for a moment before disregarding the vision as an impossibility.

"Thank the Lord you were able to hold the sword," The King said after a moment, relief flowing through his words, "I was feeling awfully worrisome."

I agreed with him without thinking as I tentatively picked the sword up off the floor, thankfully not resulting in another vision. All of a sudden what he said hit me as I realised what he had said before I first touched the sword. "You were _worried_?!" I asked, starting to feel angered but attempting to keep calm. "You said that it would all be fine."

He quickly realised the mistake he had made and weakly attempted to rectify it. "You never can be quite sure what will happen with these things."

"I could have died." I stared the fumbling ruler down as I said, "Couldn't I?"

"Well. I…" He couldn't think of anything to say. "Yes." He conceded. "If you weren't who you are, you may have died."

Relieved he was finally being honest with me, but still incredibly angry, I said, "I could have died. You just fucking stood there and encouraged me. You selfish motherfucker!" I raised my voice and pointed the sword at him from across the chamber, making the King's guard ready himself for trouble.

"I had to!" The King snapped and stepped forward. "If I had told you the truth, you wouldn't have gone through with it!" The guard strode towards me in an act of intimidation.

"Too fucking right I wouldn't have! I don't even want to _be_ here, let alone risking my life to satisfy some power-crazed king in his ridiculous castle!"

The guard forced his hand towards the sword and grasped it across a couple of my fingers and a part of the exposed handle. The King yelled at him to stop but the guard didn't pay attention and began to push the sword away from its focus on the King. I tried to resist but he was much stronger than I.

In a sudden jolt, his body stiffened. His grip tightened but his eyes locked onto mine with fear. His teeth gritted and he let out a strained groan. As I saw bolts of lightning move from the handle and up his arm, I realised what was happening.

I tried to pull my hand away from his, but his grip was so tight that he was almost completely unmoved. He couldn't open his mouth to scream, but his eyes showed that he wanted to. I brought my other hand around, grabbed his arm, and tried to push it away with all of my strength. I managed to force his hand off the sword. He immediately fell to the ground and finally let out the shriek that had built up within him.

The King darted over to his guard. "Ingram! Are you ok?!" The guard reduced his noises to simple groans, but nodded.

I dropped the sword, letting it clatter loudly to the ground once more. This wasn't good. I didn't want to be in control of something this dangerous.

"If this is what your sword causes," I began, indicating both to the sword on the ground and the slowly recovering guard, "I don't want to be a part of this. I can't help you."

"It's not just me. The world needs you." The King's comment was met with silence from both of us. I stepped towards the King, intrigued but scared.

"What do you mean?"

He stood slowly but shuffled about and tried to regain his calm composure. "I was not going to inform you of this until later, but I suppose I must now." The King looked to the ground, resigning himself to tell me what was going on. "There's a threat to our world looming and we can't fight it alone. We need you." He proceeded to tell me that the monsters that roamed the world did not belong on the surface, they were from the aforementioned 'Nether'. Someone was using the missing Shield of Control to build up a vast army of them in order to control the world. This person apparently could only control the shield so, unfortunately, the King felt that I was the only person that could stop him. Brilliant.

He told me that he didn't know what the villain's motives were, but I didn't believe him, he was hiding something. The way he glossed over who this person was or how he got hold of the shield just didn't seem right to me. Presumably, the shield was kept in the same chamber as the sword until it was stolen, I couldn't work out how this person would have got in, considering the key that was needed was always kept on the King's person as far as I could tell.

"Will you help us?" The King asked, a slight pleading tone creeping into his voice. He stretched out his arm towards me, his eyes staring into mine, hoping that my hand would meet his.

I thought for a while, leaving his hand hanging in the air. All I wanted to do was go home, I didn't want to save the world or be a part of some crazy legend. I just wanted to go back to England and continue on with my life. I couldn't see a way out of this though. "I don't have much of a choice, do I?" I really didn't, it seemed to me like I'd die from this shield-wielding arsehole either way, so I thought I'd at least put up a fight. "If I help you, can you help me get back home? To England."

"We will do everything in our power."

"Then I will _try_ and help you." I grabbed his hand and strongly shook it. "No promises that I won't just make everything worse though."

The King smirked, the first time I'd seen him show any sort of positive emotion, and said, "Let us see what you can do."

I carefully took and wore the sword's scabbard before the King and his guard, only barely recovered, led me out of the chamber and locked the door behind us. We encountered a very bored and frustrated Kate watching our exit.

"Enjoy your fucking man-time?" She didn't sound particularly happy.

Slightly lost for words, I stuttered and just said, "Not really. It was pretty horrible." She almost seemed to be happy about this. "I got this though." I drew the sword a little out of its sheathe, slowly and in such a way that I didn't look threatening to the guards. She let out a little gasp and reached out to have a closer look at it. I quickly pushed it back, "Woah! Don't touch it. There's a very real chance you can suffer from a severe case of… Death."

"That's just not fair. How come-"

"We really do not have time for this," the King interrupted Kate, something I wouldn't have advised. She glared at him as he ignored her completely. "Harding. We have time constraints. We must move quickly."


End file.
